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COLOGNE, Germany – A lackadaisical black-and-white dramedy from Berlin, two Swedish dramas — one about prostitutes in the 1970s, the other about modern-day immigrants — a Spanish story about life on outskirts of Barcelona, and an Italian tale about a real-life guardian angel. These are this year’s nominees for the European Discovery Award, the European Film Awards’ honor for best first feature.
The nominees are Oh Boy from German director Jan Ole Gerster; Swedish period drama Call Girl from director Mikael Marcimain; Eat Sleep Die, directed by Sweden’s Gabriela Pichler; The Plague from Spanish director Neus Ballus; and Italian feature Miele from Valeria Golino.
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Aside from being award-winning debuts — Oh Boy won best film at the German Film Awards, Eat Sleep Die is Sweden’s candidate for the foreign language Oscar, and so on — the films share little in terms of style or themes. Oh Boy is a wry comedy about a lay-about twenty-something doing little in Berlin. Call Girl is an examination of the underage prostitution scandal in the 1970s that shook Sweden’s political elite. Eat Sleep Die looks at the trials of an young immigrant who is suddenly laid off. The protagonist in Miele has devoted herself to helping people, whatever their problems, while The Plague is a study of five people living through Spain‘s economic crisis.
The 2,900 members of the European Film Academy will vote for the winner of this year’s European Discovery prize, which will be handed out at the 2013 European Film Awards in Berlin on Dec. 7.
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