In December 2016, shortly after Donald Trump was elected president for the first time, the European Film Awards kicked off with an SNL-style cold open. Polish director Agnieszka Holland, sitting behind the desk at a mocked-up Oval Office and flanked by machine gun-toting guards, played POTUS.
“We have occupied the White House,” the European Film Academy chairwoman intoned, added that she and her team would not leave until “democracy and tolerance” were restored. With intolerance on the rise, Holland said, the work of European filmmakers was more important than ever.
In the wake of the 2024 presidential election, with Democratic-leaning creatives in Hollywood still reeling at the fact of a second Trump term, European filmmakers, festivals and cultural institutions are again positioning themselves as the global defenders of progressive values.
“If you compare it to the rest of the world, Europe is still a place where democracy, human rights and freedom of speech are highly valued, and there’s an awareness that they are something to be defended,” says current EFA CEO Matthijs Wouter Knol, who predicts the talent at year’s European Film Awards — set for Dec. 7 in Lucerne, Switzerland — will again raise their voices against Trump and the far right.
“There’s the feeling again that we need to double down, that [political] films are more important now that ever,” adds Havana Marking, the British documentarian and director of Undercover: Exposing the Far Right. “That’s really exciting.”
Days after the U.S. election, Sweden’s Göteborg Film Festival, the most important event for the Scandinavian film industry, announced that its 2025 event (Jan. 24 to Feb. 2) would include a special section focusing on “the power of civil resistance and disobedience,” featuring films with themes that would incite the MAGA faithful, including abortion rights (Dea Kulumbegashvili’s wrenching drama April), climate change (Finnish documentary Once Upon a Time in a Forest) and a scathing critique of Israeli occupation in the West Bank (the documentary No Other Land).
“We talked a lot about not only what is happening in the U.S., but about authoritarian governments the world over,” says Göteborg festival artistic director Pia Lundberg. “We talked about courage and resistance and the fact that to be brave and to show resistance, a certain amount of disobedience is very often necessary.”
With many fearing Trump’s victory will have a chilling effect on the production and release of left-leaning films — “We’ve been trying to find an American buyer” for Undercover: Exposing the Far Right, says Marking, “and after the election, it feels very unlikely” — there’s hope that Europe will become a haven for progressive cinema.
The Trump-critical drama The Apprentice, starring Sebastian Stan as Trump and Jeremy Strong as his ’80s-era Svengali mentor, Roy Cohn, relied on Danish and Irish backing and Ali Abbasi, a Danish-Iranian director, to get made. (U.S. funding, in the form of an investment from Kinematics and its Trump-friendly billionaire owner, Dan Snyder, nearly torpedoed the film when Snyder objected to its portrayal of the once and future president. Snyder eventually sold his stake in the movie back to Apprentice producer James Shani.)
Progressive American cinema is not dead, but over the next four years, U.S. filmmakers may find in Europe a more welcoming environment. “The position and attractiveness of Europe as a place to make and to shoot films, as a place where making movies like this is still possible, will only grow,” says Knol.
Marking, however, warns that Europe’s own authoritarian shift does not bode well for cinema’s progressive future, as Europe’s film industry, unlike that in the U.S., is heavily dependent on state subsidies for funding.
Undercover: Exposing the Far Right had its festival premiere Nov. 19 at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, just months after the Netherlands swore in the most right-wing government in its modern history. Meanwhile, right-wing or far-right nationalist parties are in power in Italy and Hungary; are part of the government in Finland; and support the government in Sweden and Serbia. National elections in Germany in February are expected to see a surge of support for the extremist Alternative for Germany party, the AfD.
“The IDFA had been very supportive of our film and were excited to show it; they felt it absolutely was necessary in the current environment that they’re in,” says Marking, “but the smaller festivals, ones that are more dependent on state support, are getting nervous in case the new right-wing governments take away their funding.”
European filmmakers and cultural institutions might see themselves as the new “resistance” to the incoming Trump government. But as right-wing extremism gains ground across the continent, the European industry may find the defense of “democracy and tolerance” best begins at home.
This story first appeared in the Nov. 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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