Benedikt Erlingsson, director of Kona fer í stríð / Woman at War (Iceland, France, Ukraine) and Winner of LUX Prize 2018, speaks to the press during the plenary session (12-15/11/18) of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. This year's finalists are the films The Other Side of Everything by Mila Turajlic (Serbia/France/Qatar), Woman at War by Benedikt Erlingsson (Iceland/France/Ukraine) and Styx by Wolfgang Fischer (Germany/Austria).

statement

Strasbourg

LUX Cinema Prize 2018 (T)

Award of the LUX Prize 2018: statement by the winner Benedikt Erlingsson, director of Woman at War

SOUNDBITE (English), Benedikt Erlingsson, film director , This Prize has an incredible much value for a film, all films to get a prize like this.

SOUNDBITE (English), Benedikt Erlingsson, film director , This is all big issues, at stake in all of the films that were nominated and they are really talking to each other. So all of these three films have gotten a lift from the parliament because in the end we just want to be heard and seen, we are storytellers, we need audiences.

SOUNDBITE (English), Benedikt Erlingsson, film director :  Our heroine in the film is an activist fighting the bad guys the multinationals in her county, she has a message and see has a political message. She is saying we are the last generation to do something against climate change and we have to act now, so she has really taken up flag, she is applying economical pressure with sabotage in the spirit of Mandela, or Ghandi, economical sabotages that have created our world. So she is a revolutionary in that sense, she is radical and that raises many issues in the film. How can you do that and what does it imply? So my mission was to tell a story with a smile, you can say, about very complicated issues and to be truth to the issues and not simply the conflict. This is not a fight about good and bad, it is a fight about ourselves and there is a lot at stake for everybody, so it is really about what politics will be in the future. This will all be about the climate change, they will be talking here for the next 50 years about reactions and adjustments about the climate change and the politicians they have to be so brave, they say have to say to the voter: 'vote for me and you will have less of everything', but this is not so dark, it is better life style to have less stuff, I think we can agree on that, we in the right part of the world. Slower travel, less meat, the problem of the world is really the problem of the rich part of the world.