Two Danish Films honoured at European Film Awards

Honouring this year's achievements in European cinema, the European Film Academy presented its 2013 awards this weekend at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, naming two Danish titles among its crop of winners. "The Act of Killing" was awarded European Documentary, and "Love Is All You Need" won the European Comedy award 2013.

On Oscar shortlist

Produced by Denmark-based Final Cut for Real, Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Act of Killing" about the Indonesian genocide in 1965-66 has reaped numerous honours since its opening in 2012, including the recent shortlisting for the Oscars in the Documentary Feature category, with final nominees announced on 16 January.

Read Scenes of the Crimes and Indonesians Are Coming to Grips with their Past. 

Romantic comedy set in Sorrento

Susanne Bier's co-nominees in EFA's brand new European Comedy category were Pedro Almodóvar's "I'm So Excited", Vinko Brešan's "The Priest's Children" and Riccardo Milani's "Welcome Mr. President". Honoured with a Foreign Language Oscar in 2011 for her drama "In a Better World", the Danish director strikes a lighter tone with "Love Is All You Need", although touching on themes like cancer and divorce. Starring Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm, the film follows a group of people whose fates intertwine at a wedding set in romantic Sorrento. Produced by Zentropa.

Read A True Romantic.

The Act of Killing

Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012

When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gang¬sters who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market to death squad leaders. They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands.

Love Is All You Need

Susanne Bier, 2012

Philip, an Englishman living in Denmark, is a lonely, middleaged widower and estranged single father. Ida is a Danish hairdresser, recuperating from chemo therapy, who has just been left by her husband for a younger woman, Thilde. The fates of these two bruised souls are about to intertwine as they embark for Italy to attend the wedding of his son, Patrick, to her daughter, Astrid.