UPDATE WITH FULL WINNERS: Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value swept the board at the 38th European Film Awards in Berlin on Saturday evening.

The drama scooped Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenwriter for Eskil Vogt and Trier, as well as Best European Actor and European Best Actress for Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve respectively and Best Score.

The Cannes Grand Prix winner went into the ceremony as the frontrunner with other strong contenders including Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe’s Morocco-set drama Sirāt, German director Mascha Schilinski’s debut film Sound of Falling and Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident.

Laxe’s Sirāt dominated the craft awards with wins for Best European Production Designer, Best European Sound Design, Best European Editor, Best European Casting Director and Best European Cinematographer.

Both Sentimental Value and Sirāt have been enjoying a buzzy award season on the other side of the Atlantic, with both features making it onto the 15-title shortlist for the Best International Feature Film.

Speaking to Deadline ahead of the ceremony, Trier and Laxe were both hopeful and philosophical about getting a nomination, saying they had given it their best shots and enjoyed the ride.

In other prizes, Ugo Bienvenu’s Arco continued it award-winning spree to scoop Best European Animated Feature Film.

The work, produced by Natalie Portman produced with Sophie Mas under their joint Paris and New York banner MountainA and Félix de Givry, previously won Best Film At Annecy International Film Festival and is on the Bafta long-list for Best Animated Film.

Dark Clouds

All three film are seen as examples of a certain sort of vitality in European cinema right now, but the buzz also comes at a time when dark clouds are gathering over the region amid the ongoing Russian-Ukraine War; U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to annex Greenland and rising nationalism at home.

The European film industry is also concerned about Trump’s hereto inactivated threat to impose tariffs on non-U.S. films as well as lobbying by big U.S. media end entertainment groups to unpick aspects of Europe’s ecosystem of legislation and funding for homegrown film and TV.

Trier tackled the current climate in his acceptance speech for the Best Film prize, alluding to his grandfather Erik Løchen, who was imprisoned in WW2 for being part of the resistance and then became a director, with his film The Hunt being selected for Cannes in 1960.  

“There wasn’t really much infrastructure in the country, so he only made one more film in his life,” he said. “I don’t take it for granted the infrastructure that was built since then, both in my country, and in Europe, for collaboration across borders to create movies, art. The cultural exception group that protects our languages in individual cultures, but as a collective project, matters a lot, and whenever it’s under threat, I see many colleagues say, together with me and many others, protect this opportunity for free expression, free art, in a time when polarization is at play in a big way, many places also in Europe.”

“I am what they call the ’89 generation. I was 15 years old in 1989 when the wall came down,” he said, recalling his fears as a child, growing up in a country bordering Russia.

“I was very scared of nuclear war, but that moment in this city of Berlin, of people uniting in history changing for the better. Again, back to my point of destabilizing, the idea of not seeing the other, making borders. I think we’re at a core moment when we all have to take into account that the other is not our enemy, and that art can help us, at best, create empathy in the darkness, together with strangers, we can laugh and cry in the cinema. So this is also a plea to keep cinema alive, because it is the place where many of us grew up and learned about being human.”

Iran was also in the spotlight with Panahi opening the ceremony with an impassioned speech asking the film world not to remain silent in the wake of “the unprecedented massacre” unfolding in Iran.

He was speaking ten days into a brutal crackdown by Iran’s hardline government of nationwide popular protests. At least 3,000 protestors are believed to have been killed and another 18,000 arrested, although Panahi reiterated a report of 12,000 deaths in his speech.

“This is not just the pain of one country if the world does not respond to this blatant violence today. Not only Iran but the entire world is at risk. Violence left unanswered becomes normalized and when it become normalized, it’s spread become contagious,” he said.

“When the truth is crushed in one place, freedom suffocates everywhere. Then no-one is safe. Anywhere in the world, not in Iran, not in Europe, not in America… that is precisely why today as filmmakers and artists more than ever, if we are disappointed with politicians, we must at least must refuse to remain silent because silence in a time of crime is not neutrality silence, silence is a participation in darkness.”

Honorary Prizes

There were also honorary prizes for Norwegian acting legend Liv Ullmann and Italian director Alice Rohrwacher, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award as well as the European Achievement in World Cinema Award respectively.

Ullmann used her acceptance speech to express the role of cinema in capturing human reality as well as her consternation at  U.S. President Donald Trump being recently presented by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado with her Nobel Peace Prize.

In the other awards, Maren Ade, Jonas Dornbach, and Janine Jackowski, co-heads of Germany’s Komplizen Film, were feted with the previously announced Eurimages International Co-Production Award.

The trio gave a shoutout to Sentimental Value, the latest of a long line of coproductions which also include The Whistlers by Corneliu Porumboiu, The Story of My Wife by Ildikó Enyedi, About Dry Grasses by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Corsage by Marie Kreutzer, Yes by Nadav Lapid among many others.

The Full-List of 2026 European Film Awards Winners:

Best European Film
Sentimental Value by Joachim Trier

Best European Director
Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value

Best European Actor
Stellan Skarsgård for Sentimental Value

Best European Actress
Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value

Best European Animated Feature Film
Arco (France)
Directed by Ugo Bienvenu

Best European Documentary
Fiume o Morte! (Croatia, Slovenia, Italy)
Directed by Igor Bezinović

European Cinematographer
Mauro Herce for Sirāt

Best European Screenwriter
Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value

Best European Editor
Cristóbal Fernández for Sirāt

European Composer (Original Score)
Hania Rani for Sentimental Value

European Casting Director
Nadia Acimi, Luís Bértolo & María Rodrigo for Sirāt

Best European Make-up & Hair Artist
Torsten Witte for Bugonia

European Sound Designer
Laia Casanovas for Sirāt

European Production Designer
Laia Ateca for Sirāt

European Costume Designer
Sabrina Krämer for Sound Of Falling 

European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI
On Falling (United Kingdom, Portugal)
Directed by Laura Carreira

European Young Audience Award
Siblings (Italy)
Directed by Greta Scarano

European Short Film – Prix Vimeo
City of Poets
Directed by John Smith