Paweł Pawlikowski’s German black-and-white period drama Fatherland and Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo’s Spanish epic La Bola Negra lead the race for the 2027 European Film Awards with 11 and 10 nominations respectively, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Both frontrunners secured nominations across the major categories, including best European film, European director, European screenwriter, and European cinematographer. The ceremony for the 39th European Film Awards is scheduled to take place in Athens on Jan. 16, 2027.
Hanns Zischler and Sandra Hüller Earn Acting Nominations
Fatherland earned acting nominations for leads Hanns Zischler and Sandra Hüller for their portrayals of Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann and his daughter, Erika. Hüller secured a second best European actress nomination for her role as a 17th-century woman masquerading as a man in Markus Schleinzer’s Rose.
She competes against Penélope Cruz for Florian Zeller’s Bunker, Léa Seydoux for Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster, Mathilde Arcel for May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown, and Renate Reinsve for Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord.
The best European actor category features Zischler alongside Sebastian Stan for Fjord, Javier Bardem for Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved, Swann Arlaud for Emmanuel Marre’s A Man of His Time, and Andrew Scott for Simon Stone’s Elsinore.
Category Competitors
Nominated alongside Fatherland and La Bola Negra for best European film are Fjord, Woman Unknown, and Marine Atlan’s French coming-of-age drama La Gradiva.
The best European director nominees include Pawlikowski, Ambrossi and Calvo, Mungiu, Sandra Wollner for the German drama Everytime, and Andrey Zvyagintsev for the Russian crime thriller Minotaur.
Animation nominees feature In Waves by Phuong Mai Nguyen, Louis Clichy’s Iron Boy, Jim Queen by Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané, Olivier Clert’s Lucy Lost, and Sébastien Laudenbach’s Viva Carmen. All animation and documentary nominees also compete in the best European film category.
Documentary contenders comprise Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s Gaza war exposé Naza, Andrei Kutsila’s Letters From the Silenced Country, Pegah Ahangarani’s Rehearsals for a Revolution, Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić’s To Hold a Mountain, and Vincent Munier’s Whispers in the Woods.
