The European Film Academy has unveiled the nominees in eight Arts & Crafts categories for the 38th European Film Awards, with Sirāt, Sound of Falling and Bugonia each earning five nominations and emerging as the key craft contenders ahead of the Berlin ceremony on 17 January 2026.
These categories, now known as Arts & Crafts after previously being presented as separate Excellence Awards, are designed to highlight the work of specialist departments across European film production. The categories cover casting direction, cinematography, original score, costume design, editing, make-up and hair, production design and sound design. After a structural change, member chapters representing each craft area choose three nominees per field, with the full Academy voting on the winners alongside the main awards.
Sirāt, by Óliver Laxe, features heavily across image and sound, competing for cinematography, editing, production design, sound design and casting. Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling appears in cinematography, original score, costume, make-up and hair, and casting, underlining its strength in visual and atmospheric storytelling.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia matches that tally with nominations for original score, editing, make-up and hair, production design and sound design. Sentimental Value, which leads the main European Film categories, secures three Arts & Crafts nods, while Franz collects two. Single nominations go to The Voice of Hind Rajab, Duse, The Stranger and Die My Love, rounding out a field that mixes established auteurs with rising names from across the continent.
The crafts lineup arrives shortly after the announcement of the main European Film Award nominations and feeds into a broader push to spotlight behind-the-camera talent during a newly branded European Award Season, which strings together screenings and events in cinemas across the continent. With several titles now appearing prominently in both artistic and technical races, the Berlin ceremony is set to test how voters value craft-driven achievements in a year defined by formally ambitious European cinema.
