‘The Substance,’ ‘The Girl With the Needle,’ ‘Emilia Pérez’ Among European Film Awards Craft Winners

Coralie Fargeat’s body horror movie The Substance, Jacques Audiard’s Mexican crime musical Emilia Pérez and Magnus von Horn’s Danish period drama The Girl With the Needle are among the first winners of the 2024 European Film Awards, picking up EFA Excellence Awards in the technical categories.

Benjamin Kračun won best cinematography for his lensing of The Substance, a campy feminist fable starring Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging celebrity who takes a dangerous drug that promises to restore her youth. The EFA jury praised Kračun’s use of “highly stylized lens distortions and manipulations” to explore Sparkle’s physical and psychological demise. “It is loud and glossy, but also manages to eke out an unexpected intimacy and vulnerability. The audience is transported through to an unbearably painful, and hilariously raucous ending.”

The Substance also took the EFA for best visual effects for the team of Bryan Jones, Pierre Procoudine-Gorsky, Chervin Shafaghi, and Guillaume Le Gouez, with the jury noting the “high-level visual effects in good combination with prosthetics. Stepping back where necessary, there is a lot of excellent VFX which you don’t even notice.”

The Girl With the Needle, a dark drama about the vulnerability of pregnant women in 1920s Denmark, when abortion was illegal won best production design for Jagna Dobesz and the EFA for best original score for Frederikke Hoffmeier. The jury highlighted Dobesz’s “skillfully designed interiors, along with carefully chosen exteriors” and Hoffmeier’s minimalistic use of “distortion of acoustic sources and noisy electronic soundscapes… although it’s a period film, the music has a modern and brave approach as well and creates a timeless musical language.”

In editing, Juliette Welfling was recognized for her work on Emilia Pérez, with the jury commending her seamless integration of musical sequences and narrative scenes in Audiard’s “feverish musical odyssey” starring Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Karla Sofia Gascón.

Tanja Hausner won the costume design honor for The Devil’s Bath, a period psychodrama from Austrian directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, with the jury pointing to her precise and modern approach to period costumes.

For make-up & hair, Evalotte Oosterop was honored for her creative work in Rúnar Rúnarsson’s quiet Icelandic drama When the Light Breaks.

The sound team behind Boris Lojkine’s French feature Souleymane’s Story — Marc-Olivier Brullé, Pierre Bariaud, Charlotte Butrak, Samuel Aïchoun, and Rodrigo Diaz — received the EFA best sound honor for what the jury called a “modulated masterpiece of sonic realism.”

The EFA’s excellence awards were judged by a panel of industry professionals representing various technical disciplines in film, including composer Dascha Dauenhauer, production designer Miljen Kreka Kljakovic, make-up artist Barbara Kreuzer, costume designer Katarzyna Lewinska, VFX supervisor Iñaki Madariaga, cinematographer Kate McCullough, editor Laurent Sénéchal, and sound designer Joakim Sundström.

The awards for the main categories in the European Film Awards, including best film, will be announced at a ceremony in Lucerne, Switzerland, on Dec. 7.