Immigrant’s tale takes top ‘European Oscar’

Films about euthanasia, abortion and the hardships of immigrant life bagged the top prizes at the 17th European Film Awards on Saturday.

“Gegen die Wand” (Head-On), about a young Turkish woman in Germany who escapes her strict Muslim home through a difficult marriage to an older man, won the best film award in the competition dubbed the “European Oscars.”

Spaniard Javier Bardem won the best actor prize for his role as a paralyzed man who fought for three decades for the right to die in “Mar Adentro” (The Sea Inside), a true story.

Briton Imelda Staunton took the best actress statuette for her turn as a working-class mother who performs illegal abortions in the harrowing “Vera Drake.”

A total of 44 films were in the running for the annual awards presented by the European Film Academy, presided over by German art house director Wim Wenders and made up of 1,600 film industry professionals from around the continent.

While the awards have yet to gain the prestige of such European film festivals as Cannes, Venice or Berlin, they are respected in the industry.

“These awards are still young, but to me they are very important,” Spanish diva Penelope Cruz said after picking up the best actress prize in the People’s Choice category, for which fans across Europe vote online.

“It’s important that we celebrate what is being done in film over here, which has nothing to envy what is being done anywhere else,” said Cruz, honored for her work in the Italian film “Non Ti Muovere” (Don’t Move), directed by Sergio Castellitto.

“Mar Adentro” was the night’s other big success, netting an award for its director, Alejandro Amenabar, who made his name outside his native Spain with the suspense film “The Others,” starring Nicole Kidman.

Bardem endured five-hour makeup sessions to gain wrinkles and lose most of his hair for his part as the paralyzed euthanasia activist Ramon Sampedro. Bardem had already won the acting prize at the Venice Film Festival for the role.

The gala’s great loser was flamboyant Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, whose latest offering, “La Mala Educacion” (Bad Education), reaped seven nominations but no prizes.