“In Memoriam” 2024

This endeavour is only possible in co-operation with a heritage network that includes film archives and cinematheques, film academies and institutes all over the continent which help and consult the Academy’s heritage department.

The “In Memoriam” allows us to remember some of the great faces and forces in European film. It also gives us the chance to discover people we might not have known before. European cinema is about getting to know each other, sometimes even beyond a lifetime. This is an important process if we aim to arrive at a shared European film heritage.

Among the colleagues who passed away since last year’s European Film Awards are actors and actresses who need no introduction, faces that have shaped European film. Some are from the larger countries and maybe more widely known, like Anouk Aimée, Niels Arestrup, Alain Delon, Dame Maggie Smith, Jerzy Stuhr and Tom Wilkinson. Others are possibly mainly famous nationally such as Pétur Einarsson from Iceland, Ivan Ivanov from Bulgaria, Aldona Janušauskaitė-Dausienė from Lithuania, Mirush Kabashi from Albania , Henny Moan from Norway, Ulf Pilgaard from Denmark and Radmila Živković from Serbia. We have made no distinction, and it was imperative to us to include both.

The „In Memoriam“ also, of course, includes prolific directors, both mainstream and avantgarde, such as Veljko Bulajić, Laurent Cantet, Pim de la Parra, Otar Iosseliani, David Leland, Věra Plívová-Šimková, Ventura Pons, Paolo Taviani and Michael Verhoeven. To name but a few.

We are also reminded of prolific European producers like Burny Bos, Katinka Faragó, Margaret Menegoz, Antis Roditis and Suzanne van Voorst.

This list would not be complete without us honouring screenwriters, designers, cinematographers, and other film professionals who were dedicated to film and who have passed away, among them cinematographers Zoran Hochstätter and Leonid Burlaka, make-up artist Leendert van Nimwegen, production designer Galius Kličius and critics Michèle Levieux and Augusto M. Seabra.

We have also included people known almost exclusively to those within the film industry, like talent agent Jenne Casarotto, Christine Tröstrum, who worked in talent development and has been an integral part of Berlinale Talents for almost 20 years, and funding expert Christian Berg of Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.

Each of the people in this year’s “In Memoriam” tells us a story of European film. They tell us stories of talent and success, but also of perseverance, illness, oblivion. The people who left us this year could look back on a fulfilled life, or were taken away too early, unexpectedly, through violence. As a community caring about each other, and our work in European film, we don’t want to let them go unmentioned.

Allow us to mention a few more in particular:

Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Georgy Shklyarevsky who made more than 25 documentaries, one of which – MICROPHONE (1988) – won the FIPRESCI Prize in Oberhausen, the Main Prize at Filmfest Freiburg and a Special Mention in Uppsala.

Swiss painter, artist and filmmaker Étienne Delessert who created animated short film series for children, among them YOK-YOK, about a little character of the same name who wears a red mushroom hat and lives in a walnut shell.

One of Turkey’s oldest producers, Türker İnanoğlu, nick-named “the memory of Turkish cinema” who produced more than 60 films in the 60s and 70s and founded a cinema museum to which he donated his archive there.

We also remember composers Peter Eötvös from Hungary, Jan A. P. Kaczmarek from Poland and Mimis Plessas from Greece. Peter Eötvös was the composer of highly acclaimed operas, orchestral works and concertos written for well-known artists from all over the world and of over 20 soundtracks who founded his own institutes for the future generation of young conductors and composers with a focus on contemporary music. Jan A. P. Kaczmarek was an award-winning composer with a tremendous international reputation, a successful recording artist and touring musician, and was host of the Academy’s “A Sunday in the Country” 2011. Mimis Plessas was an iconic composer of film music, who composed the music of some of the most commercially important Greek films of the 60s and 70s.

The legendary poet and screenwriter Abdulah Sidran from Bosnia & Herzegovina belonged to the generation of young writers often referred to as the “68”. He was celebrated for his outstanding screenplays and his significant contribution to the cinema of former Yugoslavia. Written by him, THE PERFECT CIRCLE, directed by Ademir Kenovic, was nominated for the European Film Awards 1997. He also wrote the screenplay for [A] TORSION, directed by Stefan Arsenijevic, which won European Short Film 2003.

One of the trailblazers for women in the film industry, Suzanne Osten, legendary Swedish director who kept insisting on the importance of the perspective of the child and of the vulnerable and unheard.

Throughout 30 years of his impressive career, British cinematographer Dick Pope has repeatedly worked with director Mike Leigh on films such as SECRETS & LIES, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY and MR TURNER.

And, finally, the British actor Chance Perdomo who tragically died far too early from a motorcycle accident.

The list is still much longer. It is an invitation to everyone reading this and watching the “In Memoriam” to remember and embrace the stories connected to all the people who were a part of European cinema. Gone, yet not forgotten, our community wishes to celebrate and salute them all.