European Film Awards 2027 Shortlist Announced

The European Film Academy has unveiled the shortlist for the 39th European Film Awards. A total of 68 feature films from 40 European countries are now eligible for nomination.

Award-winning contenders

The list is dominated by recent festival champions. It includes Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Fjord and May el-Toukhy’s Venice Golden Lion winner Woman Unknown. İlker Çatak’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Yellow Letters and Javier Calvo & Javier Ambrossi’s Toronto audience prize winner La Bola Negra are also in contention.

Other notable shortlisted titles are Mike Leigh’s San Sebastian Golden Shell winner Tender Loving Care, Florin Şerban’s Locarno Golden Leopard winner You Don’t Belong Here, and Visar Morina’s Sundance world dramatic cinema winner Shame And Money. The selection also features high-profile works from established auteurs like Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur, Lukas Dhont’s Coward, and Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard.

Documentary and animation highlights

The documentary shortlist features fifteen titles. It includes NAZA by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, winner of the Venice jury prize, and Biljana Tutorov & Petar Glomazić’s To Hold A Mountain, winner of the Sundance international documentary prize.

The eight-title animation shortlist is equally competitive. It features Louis Clichy’s Iron Boy, which won both the audience and jury prizes at Annecy. Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané’s Jim Queen, which premiered at Cannes, is also in the running.

The full shortlists are as follows:

Voting process underway

The Academy’s 5,700 members, cinema professionals based in some 50 countries, will now watch the shortlisted films and vote for the nominations. The European Film Academy said: "Soon, the 5,700 members of the European Film Academy will watch the shortlisted films and vote for the nominations."

A series of nomination announcements will follow this autumn. The European young audience award nominations will be announced on November 1 at the International Film Festival Glasgow. Short film nominations will be revealed at the Seville European Film Festival on November 13. The main nominations for the European Film Award categories will be announced on 14 November 2026 during the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. The nominees for the LUX audience award will be unveiled on 25 November.

Gender representation

Of the 68 shortlisted films, twenty-five are directed or co-directed by women. This strong female representation spans the 45-title fiction shortlist, the documentary selection, and the animation category.

The shortlisted animated feature films were chosen by a selection committee composed of members of the Academy Board and invited experts in cooperation with Cartoon, the European Association of Animation Film. Certain awards have separate selection procedures, including the European discovery, Prix Fipresci, European short film, European young audience award, LUX audience award, and honorary awards.

The 39th European Film Awards ceremony is scheduled to take place on January 16, 2027 in Athens. Nominations for the European Film Award categories will be announced on 14 November 2026 during the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.