PRIX EUROPA 2018 Sneak Preview -
What you can look forward to at PRIX EUROPA 2018
Thundering speeches and Nazi salutes. How do you do an in-depth portray of a Nazi movement without sacrificing journalistic standards? Are you not offering platforms for propaganda? What are the deals you have to make as a journalist to be able to enter the no-go areas of right wing movements, prostitution, human smugglers, drug traffickers or global multinationals of the digital age? How have others perhaps managed to gain access, confront their protagonists or drawn their conclusions from the layers of complex information available? How can you reflect all voices?
These are some of the questions that will come up at PRIX EUROPA 2018, which is putting forward a political 32nd edition this year. The big themes revolve around the further effects of globalisation e.g. drawing attention to the Filipinos who clean the Internet or the corporations covering up the climate change, new global insurance policies against kidnapping. Stories of war, terror and flight – current and past - provide a running thread through many of the categories and offer a whole kaleidoscope of perspectives: African migrants imprisoned in Libya, Venezuelans populating the streets of Colombia filmed by a Finnish crew, Israeli soldiers giving testimony of their experiences in the occupied territories of Palestine; a family on the run from a fictitious totalitarian Germany begging for asylum in South Africa; British diaries from Word War 1 recount one real day at war; an Abkhazian father and his son Tedo describe their losses in a Georgian radio play; a Swedish app translates SVT programmes into the immigrant language of your choice.
One year after the start of #metoo, a prevalence of women’s stories is detectable – often told by women. They appear as victims, neglected, mistreated or brutalised, but also as veritable protagonists and heroines. The iconic Simone Veil, the first female politician in France after 1945, is portrayed; Alina, a young Ukrainian football player, has to take a career break to look after her ailing family; Mathilde tells the story of how she adopts the child she had with her same-sex partner in France; the life of cellist Frieda Belinfante (1904-1995) is told by her cello; Federica Mogherini, the EU’s representative for Foreign Policy, is observed by Italian-born director Annalisa Piras. Gender issues, sexual abuse and the war of the sexes further offer ample opportunity for the female perspective and experience.
Beyond the big social and political themes, however, there are numerous small gems of media-making, mosaic pieces of individual creativity without which PRIX EUROPA wouldn’t be the same. What music is best to strip to we learn in a 27 minute radio piece; the experience of being overweight is recounted in the Italian podcast ‘Meat’; the modernity in the Rosary Sonatas composed by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber in the 17th century is analysed through his music; artist Jonathan Meese and his mother Brigitte travel into the heart of the dictatorship of art in a virtual reality production and the gorilla Sally Jones, machinist on a small cargo ship in Lisbon, tells the story of a mysterious murder case on her typewriter. To mention just a few of all the voices reflected at PRIX EUROPA this year. Those who carefully watch and listen during the cram-packed festival week will have more than plenty to take home.