The President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, awarded the LUX Audience Prize on Wednesday 9 June to the documentary Collective, directed by Romanian Alexander Nanau.
Collective (Colectiv in the original)—also nominated for the 2021 Oscars—follows the investigation by a team of journalists after a nightclub fire in 2015 in Bucharest that killed 27 young people and injured 180 others. In trying to uncover the reasons why 37 of the burn victims died in hospital, even though their injuries were not life-threatening, the journalists uncover problems of nepotism and corruption.
For the first time this year, European citizens were able to participate in the selection of the LUX Prize winner: the final ranking was determined by combining the average score of the public vote and the MEPs’ vote.
The other two films shortlisted for the award were Another Round (Druk in the original) (see EUROPE 12706/25) by Danish director Thomas Vinterberg and Corpus Christi by Polish director Jan Komasa.
Polish actor Bartosz Bielenia, who played the lead in Corpus Christi and Druk producer Kasper Dissing Nielsen both hailed the victory of Alexander Nanau’s film in a press conference, praising the fact that such a documentary has won over citizens and parliamentarians at a time when journalists are under particular pressure in the EU (see EUROPE 12702/28). (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)