The European Parliament has awarded the 2018 Lux Prize in cinema to the film ‘Woman at war'(Kona fer í stríð) by Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson. The award ceremony took place on Wednesday 14 November, during the Strasbourg plenary session.
This Icelandic-French-Ukrainian co-production tells the story of an environmental activist whose political beliefs are challenged when her adoption project becomes a reality.
The 2018 Lux Prize aims to promote European cinema, make promising films accessible to a wider audience and encourage debate on values and social issues across Europe. Three films were in competition this year: ‘Woman at war’, ‘L'Envers d'une histoire’ and ‘Styx’. They will be subtitled in the 24 official languages of the EU and screened in more than fifty cities and festivals across Europe.
The day before the awards ceremony, the 3 finalist directors and other contest participants published a joint letter in support of fair and proportionate remuneration for authors and performers. This is one of the stumbling blocks in the inter-institutional negotiations on copyright reform.
Also noteworthy is the publication, on 14 November, of a European Parliament computer graphics on the state of cinema in Europe. It shows that in 2017, nearly a billion cinema tickets were sold. The number of European productions has doubled over the last 10 years to reach 1,676 in 2017, the main producers being the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)