25/11/2013 - The EBU and the EFA will launch the first festival ever based exclusively on TV and radio in the week leading up to the awards ceremony

While waiting for the European Film Awards to unveil their winners, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and the European Film Academy (EFA) have decided to warm things up. Both institutions have joined forces to launch the Eurovision Film Week, the first festival ever based exclusively on TV and radio, in the week leading up to the awards ceremony (December 7).

The EBU members’ 26 broadcasters, as well as several radio stations, will devote their schedules to celebrate European cinema. The festival will include airing European films, interviews or debates on TV channels, as well as programmes on film music and behind-the-scenes reports on the radio stations.

Also, the EBU has set up a film exchange platform, Eurovision Showcase, where Eurovision Film Week participants can share rights-free films in order to be broadcasted. There are 25 films, including Bouli Lanners’ Ultranova [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bouli Lanners
film profile], Branko Schmidt’s Vegetarian Cannibal [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Atanas Hristoskov’s No. 1 (check them out here). Twenty-two of the participating members have already announced they will broadcast some of these films, whereas three will show films from their own archives.

“At a time when funding of European cinema and public service media is under threat, we want to find ways to ensure it can continue”, declares EBU President Jean-Paul Philippot. As German filmmaker and deputy chairman of the EFA board Volker Schlöndorff stated, “the big problem for European cinema is that the films are not exchanged between one country and another.” Schlöndorff is not the only filmmaker to support this event: Costa Gavras, Agnieszka Holland and Jiří Menzel are also backing the initiative.

The Eurovision Film Week will thus lead to the upcoming European Film Awards ceremony (read the article on the nominees), which will be held in Berlin on December 7.