Three Kilometres to The End of the World wins EUFA 2024
Students from across Europe chose Three Kilometres to The End of the World by Romanian director Emanuel Pârvu to win the European University Film Award (EUFA) 2024. Introduced in 2016, the award, a joint initiative of the European Film Academy and FILMFEST HAMBURG, is presented by university students from across Europe.
Since October, five nominated films, based on the European Film Awards’ Feature and Documentary Film Selections 2024, have been viewed and discussed at 21 universities in 21 countries before each institution selected its favourite film. In early December, one student representative from each university attended a three-day deliberation meeting in Hamburg to decide on the overall winner. The winner was announced the Mayor’s Night in Lucerne, the evening before the European Film Awards Ceremony on 6 December and handed over to the main actor Ciprian Chiujdea.
Three Kilometres to The End of the World follows 17-year-old Adi, who has just finished school and is looking forward to the future. But before he decides which university to attend, he wants to spend one last summer in his idyllic home village in the Danube delta. One evening on the way back from the pub he is brutally beaten up, which changes everything. Family, church and state are suddenly blind and deaf when it comes to practising justice and finding who’s responsible for Adi’s attack.
The jury says: “The film deconstructs the mechanisms of ostracism, a worldwide problem penetrating societal and institutional structures. With the effective use of resources, the director brilliantly utilised the Romanian landscape to portray the devastating impact of homophobia. Despite decades of activism and political action, queer communities continue to be marginalised by normative society. The film invites the broader European audiences to look beyond their urban horizons and to reflect on the neglected peripheries, where bigotry transcends legislations, and humanity transcends bigotry.”
Twenty-one universities from 21 European countries are involved in the European University Film Award, each sending a delegate to the conference, where the nominated films were discussed and the winner was voted on. The previous winners of the European University Film Awards are: 2023: ANATOMY OF A FALL (D: Justine Triet), 2022: EO (D:Jerzey Skolimowski), 2021: FLEE (D: Jonas Poher Rasmussen), 2020: SAUDI RUNAWAY (D: Susanna Regina Meures); 2019: PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (D: Céline Sciamma); 2018: HAPPY AS LAZZARO (D: Alice Rohrwacher); 2017: HEARTSTONE (D: Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson); 2016: I, DANIEL BLAKE (D: Ken Loach).
The aim of this joint initiative by the European Film Academy and FILMFEST HAMBURG is to involve a younger audience, to spread the European idea and to transport the spirit of European cinema to an audience of university students. It shall also support film dissemination, film education and the culture of debating.
In 2019 it became an official category of the European Film Awards.
The European University Film Award 2024 is made possible with the support of the ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS, the Claussen-Simon Foundation, the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S. and Creative Europe Desk Hamburg.
