The end of the year marks the beginning of awards season: nearly three breathless months that end in February with the Oscars – and that began last Saturday with The European Film Awards. Launched in 1988, and relaunched with a higher profile in 1997, the ceremony takes place each year in a different European country. This year it was Germany.

The big winner on Saturday night was Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, which won best film, best director and best screenwriter. A few weeks ago I asked why Americans get to see foreign films so late, long after their original release date if at all. I gave The White Ribbon as an example. Now I can point a finger at the European Academy, and say that if they want their ceremony to be up-to-date, relevant and influential as the awards season opener, they better nominate works that haven’t already received their share of praise long ago (like The White Ribbon with its triple win, including best film, at Cannes), or worse yet, been forgotten in the mists of time (like 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader and even Let the Right One In). With nominations like those, this event could be the closing ceremony for the previous awards season.

True, this is the Oscars of Europe (though one could question the European essence, with nominations like Slumdog and The Reader). But the Oscars sum up a year that just ended; many nominees premiere only a few months earlier. What’s the logic of going back to these same movies, a year or even more after they opened, alongside fresh nominees like Fish Tank that premiered much later in 2009? Ask the European Film Academy…

If you’re looking for interesting European film to watch, here are some highlights (and a few to avoid) among this year’s nominees:

5. Fish Tank & A Prophet

Among the nominees for best movie, these two are the least known and most intriguing. And as such, they haven’t yet hit U.S. theaters. Fish Tank doesn’t even have a date.

Fish Tank is a highly acclaimed realist piece from the U.K. It won the Jury Prize in Cannes, as well as major prizes in several other festivals, including Chicago. It’s a captivating, gloomy, coming-of-age story about a rebellious teen whose life turns up-side-down when her mother brings home a new boyfriend.

With 2 prizes and 4 additional nominations, A Prophet is a powerfully rough, Oz-like prison drama, chronicling the rise-to-the-top of a clever new inmate, an Arab teen sentenced to six years in a French prison. The movie won the Grand Prize of the Jury in Cannes, as well as Best Film at the London Film Festival.

4. Honorary Award for Ken Loach

Ken Loach is practically synonymous with modern realism in filmmaking. For good or bad (depends on your taste), he is one of the last truly radical political filmmakers. He’s been making movies since the late 60s, whose essence is perhaps best captured by the Jinni gene “life’s a bitch.” They are usually heartfelt, always thought-provoking, and gloomy on the verge of bleak. So it was a bit of a surprise that his latest movie, Looking for Eric (nominated for best European actor), is a rather humorous, uplifting, semi-fantastic piece of… realism (a man going through a midlife crisis makes legendary soccer player Eric Cantona his imaginary friend, after smoking several joints). Loach claimed it’s not unusual, as he has “always done films that had a little bit of comedy in them.” Sure…

3. Ajami

The European Discovery section, which highlights first works, contains several gems. This multiple award-winning Israeli-Arab joint production is set in an urban ghetto neighborhood in Jaffa, an old city populated by Jews and Muslims, on the border of metropolitan Tel Aviv. It unfolds multiple true stories in a tense, emotional nonlinear style, carried by non-professional actors. Thus it resembles other powerful first works like Amores Perros, Tsotsi and Salaam Bombay.

2. Antichrist

This recent effort from Dogme95 founder Lars Von Trier (who is also responsible for the contemporary wave of woman-friendly porn films) garnered nominations for best director, cinematographer and actress (a prize it already won earlier in Cannes). I’m sorry to say it, but I’m glad this radical and controversial filmmaker didn’t win. (His cinematographer did, though.) Breaking The Waves was the first film of his I watched. I ended up with a severe headache and nausea, as if I’d just stepped off a stormy cruise. And that was one of his least pretentious works.

Antichrist is an extremely sexual and gory two-actor natural horror movie, set in a haunted cabin in the woods. Top critics at Rotten Tomatoes gave it 41%!

In a statement among the productions notes, Von Trier explains that this movie is a post-depression work, done “without much enthusiasm”, and that “Scenes were added for no reason. Images were composed free of logic or dramatic thinking.” And he sums up “I can offer no excuse for Antichrist.” I think he explained better than I could why it shouldn’t win awards.

(By the way, while the work itself is unorthodox, its U.S. distribution was too: it had a limited cinematic release and a VOD release at the same time.)

5. People’s Choice Awards

Since I’m on a roll with grumpy criticism, one more thing worth noting is the nominations under the People’s Choice Award. True, festival art directors, movie critics and the crowd often don’t see eye-to-eye. Still, it’s a bit strange to find Transporter 3 and even Fly Me to the Moon among the nominees. The only justification I can find for Transporter 3 is that from one brainless, mediocre-at-best installment to the next, its box office magically grows (reminding me of the equally panned yet profitable Twilight series). Fly Me to the Moon is an even greater surprise – the story of three stowaway flies on the historic Apollo 11 flight failed with both audience and critics, earning an embarrassing 17% at Rotten Tomatoes and a very modest box office. How on earth (or moon) did it get nominated? I guess they had to put up something against the sure winner Slumdog Millionaire…

Please do comment, especially if you’re European, and let us know if you’ve heard about this ceremony, and what you think of it.

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