European Film Awards: ‘The Substance’, ‘Emilia Pérez’ & ‘The Girl With The Needle’ Lead Arts & Craft Prizes

Melanie Goodfellow
·3-min read

Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez are among the winners of the European Film Academy’s 2024 Excellence Awards, celebrating arts and crafts achievements in eight categories.

The winners, which are decided by a specialist eight-member jury, will receive their trophies at the European Film Awards ceremony in the Swiss city of Lucerne on December 7.

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The UK’s Benjamin Kračun won best European Cinematography for his work on The Substance with the jury praising the way he captured the demise of protagonist Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore).

“He playfully explores her physical and psychological demise with highly stylised lens distortions and manipulations. It is loud and glossy, but also manages to eke out an unexpected intimacy and vulnerability,” read the jury comments.

|The audience is transported through to an unbearably painful, and hilariously raucous ending, achieved only through collaboration with all departments and is undoubtably a celebration of cinematography and cinema.”

French film editor Juliette Welfling won Best Editing for Emilia Pérez, with the jury noting the film’s “incredible fluidity and elegance” and praising the way it immersed “the audience in the narrative without feeling any of the usual stop-and-go between sung scenes and the others.”

Poland’s Jagna Dobesz won Best European Production Design for her work on Magnus von Horn’s Swedish-Polish co-production The Girl With The Needle.  

“The difficult life and psychological drama of young Karoline in post-WWI Copenhagen is expertly illustrated by an excellent, interesting, visually strong, and striking production design,” commented the jury.

“Through skillfully designed interiors, along with carefully chosen exteriors, production designer Jagna Dobesz strongly and powerfully contributes to the visual quality and atmosphere of the movie.”

Multi-award winning Austrian costume designer Tanja Hausner won Best European Costume Design for The Devil’s Bath, for the way her costumes built “every single character in a masterful and very modern way.

The Netherlands’ Evalotte Oosterop won best Make-up & Hair for her work on Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson’s drama When the Light Breaks.

Frederikke Hoffmeier won best European Original Score The Girl With The Needle, with the jury commenting on the “original and experimental way”.

“Next to the cinematography which seems extremely modern, although it’s a period film, the music has a modern and brave approach as well and creates a timeless musical language,” said the jury.

Marc-Olivier Brullé, Pierre Bariaud, Charlotte Butrak, Samuel Aïchoun and Rodrigo Diaz clinched Best Sound for Souleymane’s story.

“A perfectly modulated masterpiece of sonic realism. Rather than relying on score, the film utilises dialogue, diegetic music, sound effects and atmospheres to dramatise a despairing journey through the cacophony of Parisian traffic, shops, offices, restaurants and Metro stations,” said the jury.

Best European Visual Effects went to Bryan Jones, Pierre Procoudine-Gorsky, Chervin Shafaghi and Guillaume Le Gouez for their work on The Substance.

“Combining organic SFX and VFX in a surprising way, The Substance shows high-level visual effects in good combination with prosthetics. Stepping back where necessary, there is a lot of excellent VFX which you don’t even notice,” said the jury.

Representing the respective crafts, the members of the jury for the Excellence Awards were: composer Dascha Dauenhauer (Germany), production designer Miljen Kreka Kljakovic (Serbia), make-up artist Barbara Kreuzer (Germany), costume designer Katarzyna Lewinska(Poland), VFX supervisor Iñaki Madariaga (Spain), cinematographer Kate McCullough (Ireland), editor Laurent Sénéchal (France), sound designer Joakim Sundström (Sweden).

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