It is with great pleasure that the European Film Academy and EFA Productions announce the first ever EFA Documentary Selection, a list of 15 European documentaries recommended for a nomination for this year’s European Film Awards. The change follows a decision by the EFA Board to “acknowledge the growing importance of European documentary cinema,” says Israeli producer Marek Rozenbaum, EFA Board Member on the documentary committee, “there is a growing number of excellent documentaries which have to be seen by the members.”

Another change is the involvement of ten documentary festivals that recommended to the committee up to three films each which have had their world premiere at the respective festival’s latest edition. Chosen in co-operation with the European Documentary Network EDN, these festivals are:
•    IDFA (the Netherlands)
•    CPH:DOX (Denmark)
•    Visions du Réel (Switzerland)
•    DokLeipzig (Germany)
•    Docslisboa (Portugal)
•    Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival (Greece)
•    Jihlava (Czech Republic)
•    Cinéma du Réel (France)
•    Krakow Film Festival (Poland)
•    Sheffield Doc/Fest (UK)

Based on their recommendations and the films individually submitted, the documentary committee, consisting of EFA Board Members Roberto Cicutto (Italy), Nadine Luque (Spain), Marek Rozenbaum (Israel) and Ada Solomons (Romania) and documentary expert Paul Pauwels (European Documentary Network, Belgium) decided on the EFA Documentary Selection. EFA Members will now vote for five documentary nominations. Based on these nominations, the EFA Members will, as in the past, elect the ‘European Documentary 2015’ which will be announced during the awards ceremony on 12 December in Berlin.

For more information on the films and a complete list of the award categories: www.europeanfilmawards.eu