European Film Academy Partners With European Film Club and Lux Audience Award to Host Screenings of ‘Animal’ and ‘Intercepted’ With Focus on ‘European Citizens of the Future’

variety.com:

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor Over the weekend of March 15-16, the European Film Academy is hosting watch party screenings of two of its Lux Audience Award nominated films in partnership with its European Film Club, a platform and network of film clubs across Europe where teenagers aged 12-19 can watch and talk about European cinema.

Through the inaugural two screenings, young people will be able to watch Sofia Exarchou’s “Animal” and Oksana Karpovych’s “Intercepted.” Speaking with Variety ahead of the weekend of screenings, CEO and Director of the European Film Academy Matthijs Wouter Knol recalled first hearing about the idea for the European Film Club upon taking the post in the organization in 2021. “I joined the Academy planning to restructure it into an organization that would be more effective in building a culture for European cinema and have more impact when it comes to reaching audiences,” he says. “That’s also when I first heard about the European Film Club and thought, well, if we want European film culture to grow, we shouldn’t focus just on adults, but also young teenagers who are in the early stages of their lives and can discover all that European cinema has to offer,” he adds.

Upon conducting research, the European Film Academy found out that a whopping 84% of young people would “like to watch more European films,” contradicting a widespread notion that teenagers are not interested in what is outside of the mainstream. “I think it’s a mistake to think that what is most accessible to young people on the internet, in streaming platforms, for example, is automatically the only thing they are interested in,” says the exec.