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EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS 2009

Looking for Eric opens EFA

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The 22nd edition of the European Film Awards started a night early this year, with a special gala screening of Looking for Eric [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Cannes 2009
Ken Loach

interview: Steve Evets - actor
film profile
]
, the latest film of this year’s European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, British director Ken Loach.

The film on Friday evening was preceded by a conversation with Loach conducted by Sat3 Kulturzeit presenter Tina Mendelssohn in the Lichtburg theatre in Essen, one of the towns of the Ruhr 2010 European Capital of Culture. The awards ceremony will take place tonight, Saturday 12 December, in nearby Bochum.

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In the half-hour conversation -- which, in reality, lasted only half that time, since Ms Mendelssohn also had to translate everything to German -- the outspoken filmmaker talked about his political engagement, the changes in society since he was a child in the 1930s and ‘40s and the necessity of hope in these times of “late capitalism” (something also provided, according to the 73-year-old director, by his latest film).

Loach briefly described the protagonist of his new film: an employee of a contractor company working in contemporary Iraq. The director also used his time with the assembled European press to ask for attention for the case of Aminatou Haidar, a human-rights and political activist from Western Sahara who is currently on hunger strike in Lanzarote airport to call attention to the occupation of her country of birth by Morocco.

French actress Isabelle Huppert will join Loach this evening as a special EFA honouree. She will receive the European Achievement in World Cinema 2009 award.

Jacques Audiard’s French prison drama A Prophet [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jacques Audiard
interview: Jacques Audiard and Tahar R…
film profile
]
leads the pack for tonight’s EFAs with six nominations including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor for newcomer Tahar Rahim.

Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Danny Boyle
film profile
]
follows with five, and Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner The White Ribbon [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michael Haneke
film profile
]
with four. They are joined in the Best Film category by Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andrea Arnold
film profile
]
, Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: John Nordling
interview: Tomas Alfredson
film profile
]
and Stephen Daldry’s The Reader [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
.

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