The European Film Academy will present Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher with the European Achievement in World Cinema Award at the 38th European Film Awards, to be held on January 17, 2026, in Berlin. The honor recognizes Rohrwacher’s contribution to world cinema and her collaboration with producer Carlo Cresto-Dina and his company tempesta, which has produced all of her feature films.
In announcing the award, the Academy said it was recognizing Rohrwacher “for her unusual and inspiring body of work,” praising her “careful eye for the realities of a teenager’s life and a big heart for the countryside,” and calling her “one of contemporary cinema’s most distinctive voices world-wide.”
Born in Tuscany, Rohrwacher studied literature and philosophy in Turin and documentary filmmaking in Lisbon. Her debut feature, Corpo Celeste (2011), premiered at Cannes and was nominated for the Italian David di Donatello Awards. She returned to Cannes with The Wonders (2014), which won the Grand Jury Prize, and Happy as Lazzaro (2018), which earned the award for Best Screenplay and later received both European Film Award and David di Donatello nominations.
Her subsequent work includes Futura (2021), a collaborative documentary capturing the views of Italian teenagers, and La Chimera (2023), which follows a group of grave robbers dealing in Etruscan antiquities. Starring Josh O’Connor, Alba Rohrwacher, and Isabella Rossellini, La Chimera premiered in Cannes and received multiple international nominations, including for the European Film Awards, where it won for production design. Rohrwacher’s 2023 short Le Pupille was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.
The European Film Awards, organized annually by the European Film Academy, celebrate excellence in European filmmaking and promote the continent’s cinematic heritage and community of more than 5,000 members.
