Markus Schleinzer’s acclaimed film Rose can add another award to its trophy cabinet: the Austrian-German co-production starring Sandra Hüller won this year’s Arab Critics' Award for European Films on 17 October. The prize, now in its eighth edition, is presented by European Film Promotion (EFP) in collaboration with the Arab Cinema Center (ACC) at the El Gouna Film Festival.

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More than 100 critics from various Arab countries voted for the winner from among 25 European movies that were screened for them over a two-month period. The award ceremony at the El Gouna Film Festival took place in the presence of the film’s producer, Johannes Schubert.

Director Schleinzer said this after receiving the award: "A prize from critics is something very special. It means that people who spend their professional life watching closely – people who notice the seams, the choices, the things that work and the things that almost worked – have decided that what we made was worth their attention. That is a harder verdict to earn. And I don’t take that lightly. Because criticism at its best isn’t a verdict handed down from above; it’s a conversation. It helps keep the work alive long after the first audience has gone home. It helps get even more people into the conversation. You can think a lot, and you can do a lot, but if people are not coming to see it, it is all meaningless. Therefore, I cannot thank you enough for always helping the conversation to remain ongoing, thanks to the work you do."

Rose is Austria’s official submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film and is being sold by The Match Factory. This year's other finalists were Myrsini Aristidou’s Hold Onto Me (Cyprus/Denmark/Greece) and Lukas Dhont’s Coward (Belgium/France/Netherlands) (see the news).

The award was launched in 2019 by EFP and ACC. It is a spin-off of the ACC’s now well-established Critics' Awards to boost film diversity in the region and raise the interest of sales companies and the industry in outstanding European films. This initiative also aims to train a spotlight on distinguished film critics from 15 Arabic-speaking countries, and their important role in opening up new perspectives and bridging cultural diversity. The previous winners were God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya by Teona Strugar Mitevska (2019), Undine by Christian Petzold (2020), 107 Mothers by Péter Kerekes (2021), EO by Jerzy Skolimowski (2022), Fallen Leaves by Aki Kaurismäki (2023), Mohammad Rasoulof's The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) and Yunan by Ameer Fakher Eldin (2025).