The American awards season finally reached full speed this morning with the announcement of the Golden Globes, the film and television awards handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The American-funded, multilingual drama Babel from Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu was the film with the most nominations (seven in total, including Best Drama), with European films doing very well overall, including in the acting categories. British drama The Queen, a fictive look at the Royal Family in the week following the death of Lady Diana, scored a very respectable four nominations, with another British drama, Richard Eyre's Notes on a Scandal, walking away with three nominations, Almodóvar's Volver with two and Germany scoring a Best Foreign language nomination for their Stasi drama and EFA Best Film Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others).

26-year-old actor Swedish Gustaf Skarsgård, son of Stellan Skarsgård (Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest), was named the 2007 Swedish Shooting Star by the Swedish Film Institute. The young actor is most famous internationally for his role as the posh antagonist in the Mikael Håfström-directed boarding school drama Ondskan (Evil), opposite the 2005 Swedish Shooting Star Andreas Wilson. He also starred in the hip youngster drama Babylonsjukan (Babylon's Disease) and the Ylva Gustafsson and Catti Edfeldt-directed Förortungar (Kids In Da Hood), which, like the Shooting Stars initiative of European Film Promotion, will be presented at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival.

 

Director Jannik Johansen is currently filming his new €2,4 million drama in the Danish capital Copenhagen. The film stars Lars Brygmann (who played the lead in Johansen’s feature debut Rembrandt/Stealing Rembrandt) as Ulrich, a successful real estate agent who commits a “fatal act” by accident, which makes his life spin out of control. The film also stars Johansen-regulars Nicolas Bro and Anne Sophie Byder, Rikke Louise Andersson (Den gode strømer/The Good Cop) and Morten Grunwald (who starred as Benny Fransden in the original Olsen-banden film series from the 1970s). The film was written by Johansen and prolific writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen (Adams æbler/Adam’s Apples), who together co-wrote Johansen’s previous two films Rembrandt and Mørke (Murk).

 

Spanish director Sebastián Mantilla has wrapped filming and has gone into postproduction on his first feature film Next to Babilonia, which is set during the Iraq War. During the last day of the Spanish deployment in said war, an Iraqi-origin soldier (played by newcomer Amaia Arzua) gets trapped in an ambush, leading her to fight a new war. Next to Babilonia is Matilla's debut feature, after having directed several short films. It is not yet clear when the film will be released.