Following the successful celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the European Film Awards, the European Film Academy’s Board has met at the Göteborg International Film Festival in Sweden to work on the challenges of the next decade of the Awards and their 21st edition to be held in Copenhagen.

The Academy is particularly proud that the Awards are hosted in the country that has produced creators of world stature, from Dreyer to Dogma, and that has traditionally sustained a confident and dynamic film industry, with an amazing work in all areas of education, distribution and creation of new films.

In the spirit of its founders, among these Ingmar Bergman, István Szabó, Federico Fellini, Claude Chabrol, and Lord Richard Attenborough, the Board of the European Film Academy, in its continuing effort to promote the films made by European talent, has decided to offer the new generations of European creators the chance to be more involved in its activities.

In this line, EFA is developing a system to promote new discoveries at European film festivals. EFA will also support and create awareness for the work of young film students and for training programmes in different European countries. A special focus of EFA’s commitment in the upcoming years will be on teaching the next generations the language of the moving image and the language of European cinema.

Gothenburg and Berlin, 5 February 2008