‘The Dark Valley’ Leads Nominees For German Film Academy Awards
Sam Riley in ‘The Dark Valley’
The nominees have been announced for this year’s German Film Academy Awards, with Western drama The Dark Valley leading the race with nominations in nine categories, including Best Picture.
Based on Thomas Willmann‘s 2010 best-seller, it stars British actor Sam Riley (Control, Brighton Rock) as a mysterious stranger who arrives in an Austrian alpine village in search of revenge.
The film has also been nominated for Best Director (for the Viennese-born Andreas Prochaska) and Best Supporting Actor for Tobias Moretti, as well as in all technical categories.
The Dark Valley received its world premiere at this year’s Berlin Film Festival on February 10.
Also up for awards is Edgar Reitz‘s Home From Home: Chronicle Of A Vision, a black-and-white period drama and the latest in Reitz’s Heimat series, with nominations in six categories including Best Picture and Director.
Germany’s answer to the Oscars, the German Film Academy Awards (Deutscher Filmpreis) are the highest honours for filmmaking in the country. They have come to be affectionately known as the Lolas, named after both Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s 1981 film Lola and Marlene Dietrich‘s role in The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel).
Previous Best Picture winners include Tom Tykwer‘s Run Lola Run, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s The Lives Of Others and Michael Haneke‘s The White Ribbon.
This year’s winners will be announced in Berlin on May 9.
