European Film Academy

The European Film Academy (EFA) and the Berlin International Film Festival congratulate the

Berlin Short Film Nominee for the European Film Awards 2011
ÅTERFÖDELSEN (The Unliving)
by Hugo Lilja
Sweden, 2010, 28 min., fiction

In big images the film conjures up a dystopian society in the style of a horror film. Thirty years after an outbreak of zombies, people have gotten used to their presence. Zombies are a cheap source of labour and so enable the rest of society to have a high standard of living. Though first all the so-called normal people have to catch and tame the zombies; they then subject them to bloody experimental lobotomies. This is also the way Katrin and Mark get by. Yet their relationship threatens to fall apart when Mark brings somebody home. The jury states: “Full of passion for cinema, humorous, visually stunning, charismatic. In 28 minutes the audience rides a rollercoaster of cinematic electricity. The EFA nomination goes to Återfödelsen by Hugo Lilja.”

The film is now nominated for the award European Film Academy Short Film 2011. It was selected by the festival’s international short film jury which was made up of artist and photographer Nan Goldin, Renen Schorr, filmmaker and director of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television in Jerusalem, and film producer and director Ibrahim Letaief from Tunisia.

The short film initiative is organised by the European Film Academy in co-operation with a series of film festivals throughout Europe. At each of these festivals, an independent jury presents one of the European short films in competition with a nomination in the short film category of the European Film Awards.

THE UNLIVING joins the following nominees: BERIK by Daniel Joseph Borgman (Denmark), selected at the Flanders IFF - Ghent; SMÅ BARN, STORA ORD (Little Children, Big Words) by Lisa James-Larsson (Sweden), selected at the Valladolid IFF, HÄNDELSE VID BANK (Incident by a Bank) by Ruben Östlund (Sweden), selected at the Corona Cork FF; JESSI by Mariejosephin Schneider (Germany), selected at the Premiers Plans - Festival d’Angers, and I LUPI (The Wolves) by Alberto de Michele, selected at the Rotterdam IFF.

The next nomination will be presented in co-operation with the Tampere International Film Festival in March.

When the annual cycle is completed in September, the nominees will be presented to the over 2,300 members of the European Film Academy and it is they who will elect the overall winner: the European Film Academy Short Film 2011 which will be presented at the 24th European Film Awards Ceremony on 3 December in Berlin.

Berlin, 21 February 2011