‘Sentimental Value’; ‘It Was Just An Accident’ & ‘Deaf’ Make Europe’s LUX Audience Award Shortlist + Arab Critics For European Films Noms
Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value are among five titles nominated for Europe’s Lux Audience Award.
The prize is presented by the European Parliament and the European Film Academy in partnership with the European Commission and Europa Cinemas.
Both films are also in the running for the 2026 Best International Feature Film Oscar, with Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning Iranian French Luxembourgish co-production submitted by France, and Trier’s family drama entered by Norway.
The nominated films also include Brendan Canty’s Cork-set coming-of-age drama Christy ( UK, Ireland), Eva Libertad’s Deaf (Spain), about a deaf woman coping with motherhood, and Anna Cazenave Cambet’s custody battle tale Love Me Tender (France).
The nominees were unveiled in an announcement at the European Parliament on Tuesday, with the shortlist decided by a committee of European film professionals over the summer.
The LUX Audience Awards is one of the only film prizes in the world where citizens vote alongside a democratically elected parliament.
Free screenings of all five nominees will be held in the 27 EU member states from now until April 2026. Citizens of these countries, as well as Members of the European Parliament, can vote for their favourite film on the LUX Audience Award rating platform. Their respective votes will each count 50% towards the films’ final scores.
A ceremony to announce the 2026 LUX Audience Award laureate will take place at the European Parliament in Brussels in mid-April 2026.
For the 2025 award, more than 900 screenings of the shortlisted films were organized, with discussions involving more than 90,000 audience members. 2025’s winner was Flow by Gints Zilbalodis, which also won the 2025 Best Feature Animation Oscar.
Awarded since 2020, the aim of the LUX Audience Award is to foster dialogue and engagement between politics and the public, with key themes this year spanning youth and mental health, inclusiveness, and democracy.
In other Europe-related awards nomination news on Tuesday, the Arab Critics’ Awards for European Films also unveiled its short list.
Spanish director Libertad’s Deaf also featured in this nomination list alongside North Macedonian drama DJ Ahmet by Georgi M. Unkovski and Germany-based Syrian filmmaker Ahmet Ameer Fakher Eldin’s Yunan, about a traumatized man who travels to a remote North Sea island to end his life.
A joint venture between European Film Promotion (EFP) and the Arab Cinema Center (ACC), the prize is voted on by 100 film critics hailing from 16 Arab countries. The winner will be unveiled at the El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt later this month.
Previous winners include God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya by Teona Strugar Mitevska (2019), Undine by Christian Petzold (2020), 107 Mothers by Peter Kerekes (2021), EO by Jerzy Skolimowski (2022) Fallen Leaves by Aki Kaurismäki (2023) and The Seed of the Sacred Fig by Mohammad Rasoulof (2024).
