Presented by European Parliament Official website www.luxprize.eu | First awarded 2007 | |
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Awarded for Excellence in illustrating the universality of European values and the diversity of European culture Country Countries eligible for the European Commission Media Programme | ||
The European Parliament LUX Prize is a prize given to a competing film by the European Parliament. Introduced in 2007, it is named after the unit of illuminance, "lux", which is Latin for "light". The objective of the LUX Prize is to illuminate the public debate on European integration and to facilitate the diffusion of European films in the European Union.
Contents
Selection criteria
Films to be selected have to meet following criteria:
Selection panel
For the first edition of the prize, three films were shortlisted by a 17-member panel composed mainly of people working in the cinematic professions who were appointed by the European Parliament's Culture and Education Committee. Each film is shown nine times within the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, in a 90-seat cinema room specially conceived and built for this purpose.
Panel members were:
Critics
Producer and distributor, Atalanta Filmes. Director, Estoril Film Festival
Deputy Director, European Film Academy
Exhibitor and distributor. Co-president, Natfilm International Film Festival.
Distributor, Cinéart-Cinélibre
Special advisor, ERT
Administrator, Europa Cinema
Distributor, Gutek Film
Director, Krems European Film Festival (EU XXL Film), and former Member of the European Parliament
Co-scriptwriter of Welcome
Deputy Director, Berlinale's European Film Market
Editor, British Film Institute’s critical magazine Sight & Sound
Secretary-General, Prix Europa
Exhibitor and distributor, Lucky Red
Programmer, Sofia International Film Festival
Delegate-General, Eurocinema
Critics
The jury
Only the 754 Members of the European Parliament, who have seen all three films during the screenings or extra muros, are entitled to vote. Voting takes place electronically via the intranet site at the Parliament. The film which gains the highest number of votes is the winner.
The producers of the ten shortlisted films are required to provide digital copies in the form of DVDs, Vimeo link, or OpenDCP for the members of the European Parliament. In 2015, the shortlisted Son of Saul was disqualified when the production team refused to provide this fearing from these copies being pirated.
The prize
The LUX Prize consists of assistance in kind in the form of subtitling and video-to-film transfer (kinescopage) of the winning film in the 23 official EU languages (including the film's original language, for the deaf and hard of hearing).
In the case that the winning film has already been sold for projection in cinemas in some countries and subtitled for the purpose, the nature of the prize (e.g. assistance with production of the DVD) will be determined by agreement between the European Parliament and the film's appointed representatives.
The trophy forming the LUX Prize's visual identity is created by the Belgian artist Jocelyne Coster and inspired by a representation of the Tower of Babel, the symbol also used by the European Parliament to indicate multilingualism and cultural diversity united in a single place and with a single goal. The trophy is presented in the plenary in Strasbourg, France to the laureate by the Parliament President in front of the MEPs, and representatives from the other films in competition.