SEMINCI became a meeting point for European Film Awards short-listed filmmakers

Filmmakers Maura Delpero, Mohammed Rasoulof, Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, Saulé Bliuvaité and Luna Carmoon visited Valladolid to present the films nominated for the European Film Awards.

Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s Armand, nominated for Best Actress and the European Discovery Award, received the Young Jury Award for Best Film in the Official Section at the 69th edition of SEMINCI.

The 69th edition of the Valladolid International Film Week ( SEMINCI), held from October 18 to 26, 2026, included in its program six of the films announced yesterday by the EFA as nominees for the European Film Awards 2024.

Hence, directors Maura Delpero, Mohammed Rasoulof, Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel and Saulé Bliuvaité have coincided at SEMINCI in 2024, and Luna Carmoon, in 2023, to present the nominated films.

Two of the films nominated for the European Film Academy Awards, Vermiglio (Italy, France, Belgium), by Maura Delpero, and Armand (Norway, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden), debut feature by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, participated in the Official Section of the 69th edition of SEMINCI. Both filmmakers presented their works to the public in Valladolid last October and Armand also won the Young Jury Award.

The Italian director’s film, Vermiglio, is in the running for the Best Film and Best European Director awards. The grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, meanwhile, could win the European Discovery-FIPRESCI Award for best feature film by a first-time director. Armand also aspires to the Best Actress Award for its leading actress Renate Reinsve, in the role of the mother of a boy accused of sexually harassing a classmate.

Competing with Armand for the European Recognition Award are two other films that have been screened in SEMINCI’s Punto de Encuentro section. The space dedicated to the most promising voices of the international film scene included in 2024 Toxic (Lithuania), by Saulé Bliuvaité, and in 2023, The Excesses (Hoard) (UK), by Luna Carmoon. Both young filmmakers shared in Valladolid their vision of adolescence from the point of view of their conflictive relationship with their bodies and their relationship with a mother with Diogenes syndrome.

The Constellations section, a section that has been premiered at this edition to showcase the latest works by renowned directors who have previously competed at SEMINCI, included three other films that are candidates for European awards: The Seed of the Sacred Fig Tree (Germany, France), by Mohammad Rasoulof; Bird (United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany), by Andrea Arnold; and Emilia Pérez (France), by Jacques Audiard, a regular filmmaker in the SEMINCI programme who received an Honorary Spike in 2013.

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who lives in Germany, received the 2018 Honorary Spike at SEMINCI this year, which he was unable to receive at the time because he was confined to house arrest. His latest film, a social drama that reflects the street protests in his native country through the intimacy of a family, could win the European awards for best film, director and screenplay.

Among those programmed at SEMINCI, the musical about the search for identity set in the world of Mexican drug traffickers Emilia Pérez gathers the largest number of European nominations: for best film, director, screenplay and actress for its protagonist, the Spaniard Karla Sofía Gascón. One of Bird’s protagonists, Franz Rogowski, is also up for Best Actor for a story about a teenager that fuses British social realism with daydreams, and which could also reward its director, Andrea Arnold, a regular presence in the SEMINCI programme since 2011, with a European award as a filmmaker.

The winners of the European Film Academy Awards will be announced on 7 December at a ceremony to be held in Lucerne (Switzerland).