What is the quintessential European film of the last 30 years? Four experts respond (blogpost-0043)

What is the quintessential European film of the last 30 years?
Four experts respond

Last May in Madrid, at the Frames of Change conference (22-23 May, 2025), scholars discussed the main traits in the transformation of the European Film Industry over the last thirty years. In presentations and round tables, they reflected on regulation and policy, film production and distribution, on Europe’s film identity and its most renowned auteurs. But we also wanted to give these general reflections a more specific shape. Thus, we asked Mariana Liz, Christopher Meir, Marina Rossato Fernandes and Melis Behlil about what they consider the quintessential European film of the last thirty years. Their rich responses reflect years of research on these issues, while also allowing us a valuable glimpse into their more personal tastes and preferences. Here are their thoughts:

Goodbye Lenin
Mariana Liz

Mariana Liz’ answer instantly connected the personal with the historical on the basis of a career that has been for decades dealing with these questions: “I think about the work I did for my thesis, and this was already 15 years ago, [looking for] one film that helped me to structure the question: ‘what is the idea of Europe emerging in European cinema? The film that best embodied this was Goodbye Lenin because it was a kind of middlebrow film, not an art film, but not quite a mainstream film either. It drew in a lot of audiences, not just in Germany, and it was a relatively successful film also in other European countries, having also launched the career of a young actor with positive critical responses too.”

“In terms of topic”, Liz continued, “it was about Europe and European issues; obviously the film is about the fall of the Berlin Wall, so very much about the future of Europe. But I also think that Europe is related to this tension between the importance of politics, the importance of popular culture, and the importance of what we believe in – and the film was also a kind of make believe and about inventive narratives.”

The Worst Person in the World
Christopher Meir

Although for none of the four participants this seems to be an easy subject, for Christopher Meir this was “the question that really gave me a sleepless night”. He elaborated on that, combining again the personal with the academic: “The tempting point would be to pick your favorite film. And most recently that would be something like The Worst Person in the World, which is a great kind of continuation of humanist European art cinema.”

This first pick was rapidly balanced with a second one, that also takes into account the industrial transformation of the continent’s film industry over the past three decades: it refers to “some of the great popular films that have come out of Europe, like Intouchables or Welcome to the North, which kind of spawned not only big box office hit in France, but imitations in Italy and Spain. And so I think maybe the most emblematic for me would be Perfect Strangers, the Italian film that everyone in Europe has watched, but in their own languages. And I think that's the epitome of the European ideal of unity in diversity; that you have this story that's appealing to everyone in many European markets.”

There seems to be indeed a very European aspect to that: “We can't kind of see the forest for the trees in the sense that everyone's enjoying it in their own language, with their own stars… Depending on how you look at it, it is either sadly fragmented or a reminder of the ways of how a remake formula [may work]. It is a blueprint for how to creatively think around the fragmentary challenge of European cinema and define formulas that work for audiences and producers. We have 17 films in place of one, and this is maybe good in a lot of ways.”

The Zone of Interest
Marina Rossato Fernandes

Marina Rossato Fernandes chose a very recent example that actualizes the European arthouse tradition: The Zone of Interest from Jonathan Glazer: “In this movie the approach is totally unique: we are not focused on heroes or violence, we are not exploring war scenes and big explosions and [we] are not even provided a lot of information about the historical context. It's really on a micro scale with an individual focus and highly connected with our lives today”. These more cinematographic characteristics seem to be the ones that effectively make this title “a representative of the European film industry, because it is original, it has a high artist quality and it talks about crucial issues for our society.”

Mustang
Melis Behlil

The question was also challenging for Melis Behlil: “I teach a course on European cinema and I find it impossibly difficult to find films to show because there's so many.” Her reflections added an interesting twist to the previous answers, reflecting on film circulation and questions of identity and perception: “We were talking about this with my team recently and especially looking from a Turkish perspective, I would have to say Mustang. Not because it is quintessentially European’ necessarily, it's actually a Turkish- French film. And although I have a lot of problems with that film, it is a very good example of how co-productions don't always get it right. This gets reflected also in its reception: it received a very warm reception in the west, and this also demonstrates that outsiders don't always understand how a country has been portrayed. There is actually a book about this very specific topic edited by Elif Akçali, one of the members of our research group. But there is still a lot to be talked about.