Interviews of the 3 nominees for the Lux Audience Award 2021: Alexander NANAU (Director) for "Collective", Kasper DISSING (Producer) for "Another Round" and Bartosz BIELENIA (lead actor) for "Corpus Christi". The Lux Audience Award 2021 of the European Parliament is awarded to "Collective" during the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

Strasbourg

interview

LUX European Audience Film Award 2021 (T)

BIELENIA, Bartosz (PL)

NANAU, Alexander (RO)

DISSING, Kasper (DK)

Lux Audience Award 2021 - Interviews of the 3 nominees: Alexander NANAU (Director) for "Collective", Kasper DISSING (Producer) for "Another Round" and Bartosz BIELENIA (lead actor) for "Corpus Christi"

Title: Lux Audience Award 2021 - Interviews of the 3 nominees: Alexander NANAU (Director) for &quot;Collective&quot;, Kasper DISSING (Producer) for &quot;Another Round&quot; and Bartosz BIELENIA (lead actor) for &quot;Corpus Christi&quot; 

SOUNDBITE (English), Alexander NANAU , Director/Producer for &quot;Collective&quot;, What my film 'Collective' combines, let's say all of Europe, is the one thing that seems to be more similar everywhere in Europe, which is the way power works and the way politics and power needs journalism to counterbalance it, because we see more and more countries, more corruption. We see more and more people, rightfully elected people in power, positions that misuse their power, step onto people's lives or very corrupt, as we could see in the pandemic in so many countries. And I think 'Collective' shows this need for journalism in order to provide European citizens with the truth, because power tends to produce all the time, a paralell reality in order to hide their intentions, and the lack of trust citizens start to have in power is because we have more and more the feeling that there is a big gap between us and those in power and many times those in power do not serve the citizens but other interests.

SOUNDBITE (English), Alexander NANAU , Director/Producer for "Collective", I think a vote that combines, let's say, 50 percent from parliament members and 50 percent comes from from European citizens. It is essential because it combines basically the will of the two. But it would be interesting maybe also to see what citizens voted for and what the parliament is voting for.

SOUNDBITE (English), Alexander NANAU , Director/Producer for "Collective", All our films, all the three films are strong films that have already very strong distribution. But the LUX Award is, let's say, a PR campaign that comes on top and is highlighting the films as really centrepieces of European cinema.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kasper DISSING, (Producer) for &quot;Another Round&quot;, We have go out and find public funds and national funds, supranational funds to raise the money required and we work on very limited budgets, that all sounds very bad. But in reality, that means that every fund that we ask for money supports the art form and supports the director. That means that, as opposed to a more commercial way of financing, you get stories and films that are based on a creative vision from a director instead of a vision for income.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kasper DISSING, (Producer) for "Another Round", Because we are so connected in Europe and we make co-production with other countries, we spice up the stories with whether we know it or not, whether we do it on purpose or not. We we spice the stories with the European flavour.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kasper DISSING, (Producer) for "Another Round", I think at one point the young people of Denmark where European champions and drinking too much. I don't know if that's true anymore, but at one point we were all very proud. And so we thought it was a very Danish thing to drink a lot. And then it turned out when we showed the film to French people, into Italian people and Belgian people, everybody said this is a very French film and this is a very Italian film and this is very German film. So it turns out it was a very European film. I don't know if it's that American, but they like it as well.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kasper DISSING, (Producer) for "Another Round", We don't make films for the juries or for the professions. We actually make films for the audience in hopes that they will be attracted to our film and get something out of it. So, yeah, I think every audience award is very important in competition with excellent films. So it's a great honour to be in the same league as them. And whether you can call it a competition or not, this award, but the added value of getting subtitles for every European country is it's a very good because as I said, the audience is important for us. And the more people that see our films, the better, basically.

SOUNDBITE (English), Kasper DISSING, (Producer) for "Another Round", We're in competition with excellent films. So it's a great honour to be in the same league as them. And whether you can call it a competition or not, this award, but the added value of getting subtitles for every European country is it's a very good because as I said, the audience is important for us. And the more people that see our films, the better, basically.

SOUNDBITE (English), Bartosz BIELENIA, (lead actor) for &quot;Corpus Christi&quot;, We like to leave open endings and, you know, not give answers for the audience, but raise the questions more. In my opinion, there's no explicit opinion in European cinema. It's always like we don't know. We don't really know what's the human nature. We don't really know what is that situation. We like to fantasise or make a documentary around that.

SOUNDBITE (English), Bartosz BIELENIA, (lead actor) for "Corpus Christi", It's great that we can reach so many people, we never expected that when we were creating Corpus Christi, we thought that we were making a local film for Polish audience. Then we realised we created something more ontological. But, you know, and those films that we're nominated with, the 'Collective' such an important, beautiful piece of art on the importance of investigative journalism or this incredible film, 'Another round', which really, with a suttle touch in such a subtlety, touches the human nature and addiction. And it's just great. 