Europe's LUX prize goes to When We Leave

Mavi Boncuk |

Feo Aladag’s When We Leave (Die Fremde) has won the 2010 European Parliament LUX Cinema prize worth 90,000 Euros.

The film, which is this year’s German foreign-language Oscar submission, tells the story of a Turkish woman (Sibel Kekilli) [1] trying to make a new life in Berlin after escaping an abusive husband in Istanbul. The European Parliament’s president Jerzy Buzek presented the award to Aladağ at a special ceremony today (24 Nov). She is the first female director to be shortlisted since the award began in 2007.

The award carries a cash prize of 90,000 Euros towards subtitling the film in all official EU languages, adapting the original version for visually- or hearing-impaired people and producing a 35mm print per EU Member State or for the DVD release. The LUX Prize is awarded to films that illustrate the founding values of European identity, explore cultural diversity or contribute insights to the EU integration debate.

This year’s other finalists were Filippos Tsitos’ Akadimia Platonos and Olivier Masset-Depasse’s Illégal.

[1] Sibel Kekilli (born 16 June 1980 in Heilbronn, West Germany) is a German actress of Turkish origin, who gained public attention after starring in the 2004 film Gegen die Wand (Head-On). She has twice won the highest German movie award Lola.

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