EUFCN Location Award 2022: Meet the Jury

The European Film Commissions Network (EUFCN) is delighted to announce the Jury for the sixth edition of the EUFCN Location Award, the annual prize for European filming locations.

The five distinguished professionals in the industry are in the process of selecting the five locations that will compete for best European filming location of 2022.

Markus Bensch (Production Executive / locations at Studio Babelsberg Motion Pictures Gmbh), Olivier Dock (Independent International Advisor in film, audiovisual production and distribution at Whitebench), Harriet Lawrence (Supervising Location Manager – The Key Locations), Vittoria Scarpa (Journalist and Translator at Cineuropa), and former EUFCN President Truls Kontny (CEO and Executive Producer at Evil Doghouse Nordic) have the task of evaluating the 20 submissions from EUFCN member film commissions, focusing on the significant role of the location in the story and its innovative use inside the audiovisual product. The five finalists will be revealed on Nov. 28, 2022.

The EUFCN Location Award was established in 2017. Every year EUFCN members have the opportunity to nominate one location from a film or a TV series shot in their country and released with international distribution that particular year. To be nominated for this year’s edition, the production associated with the location must have premiered in cinemas, festivals, TV, online or on digital platforms between September 11th 2021 and October 3rd 2022. After the selection of the shortlist, starting from November 28nd, the general public will have the chance to vote for their favourite location on the EUFCN website. One lucky winner will be picked among the voters and will win a trip to the Best European Filming Location of 2022.

Past winners of the EUFCN Location Award are the City of Gorlitz (Germany), for playing the title role in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel; the Island of Corfu (Greece), in recognition of the role it played in the UK TV series The Durrells; El Hierro, Canary Islands (Spain), intriguing setting of Spanish thriller TV series Hierro; the Pažaislis Church and Monastery Complex (Lithuania), which helped to recreate the splendid and tumultuous reign of Empress Catherine II of Russia in the miniseries Catherine the Great; and last year’s winner Cahir Castle (Ireland), a key location for David Lowery’s fantasy film The Green Knight.

Below, a focus on each juror.

Markus Bensch
Markus Bensch has been working on locations since 1992 and joined the LMGI in 2016. He was nominated three times for an LMGI award, twice for outstanding location work on period films: in 2016 for Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and in 2020 for Terrence Malick’s A hidden life. He was also nominated for his work on contemporary TV series Inventing Anna. In 2020 Markus Bensch was the first German location professional to be accepted into the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (Production Design branch). Markus is based in Berlin, Germany.

Olivier Dock
Olivier Dock is an independent international advisor specialized in film and audio-visual production and distribution. Until 2017, Olivier was Vice President and Deputy Managing Director of the Motion Picture Association’s EMEA offices in Brussels, which he joined 21 years earlier. Olivier notably oversaw content protection activities in France and Spain, as well as national regulatory/commercial issues (theatrical and all media) across the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Today, he advises primarily on global production. Olivier holds a BA from the Brussels School for Translators and Interpreters, an MA in International Politics from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), a European Certificate in Audio-visual Financing and Commercialization from Sorbonne Panthéon / INA, and an MBA from the Solvay Business School.

Harriet Lawrence
Harriet Lawrence started her Location Managing career in the 1990’s working on commercials. Since then, she increasingly worked in drama and independent UK films. She has found the Moon on Earth, Scotland inside of the M25, the Maldives in a Heathrow hotel and Wolverhampton in Central Scotland. She has worked on all sorts of TV dramas, feature films, and stills shoots including Suffragette, Burton and Taylor, Fleming, Parks & Recreation, Henry VIII, all the Outnumbered series, setting up the first series of Downton Abbey and many of Stephen Poliakoff’s films including Dancing on the Edge. She is about to wrap on Emerald Fennell’s new film Saltburn. Since 2007, Harriet Lawrence runs the renowned Assistant Location Managers Training Course via Film London then Production Guild, and more recently supported by The Location Collective.

Vittoria Scarpa
Journalist and translator. Graduated in Foreign Languages and Literatures, Master in Journalism, Vittoria Scarpa starts working for Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso in 2003 (Kataweb, La Repubblica). In the following years she extends the collaborations with other national newspapers, including Hit Mania Magazine and Vanity Fair Italia, the website Style.it (ed. Condé Nast), the swiss press agency Café Europe. Since 2007 she works in Cineuropa.org as translator and Italian correspondent.

Truls Kontny
A dynamic C- Level Executive with more than 33 years of experience in the Scandinavian Film Industry. From 1989 to 2002 he served as CFO and later Managing Director of Norsk Film AS, the biggest production company in Norway at that time, where he produced, financed, and oversaw production of over 30 films and managed the financing activities for international and domestic co-productions. As Managing Director of the Norwegian Film Commission from 2003 until July 2021, Mr Kontny has been instrumental in bridging Scandinavian film production to the global industry. He has been serving and serves on several international board of directors including President of Scandinavian Locations, President of Nordic Film Commissions, and President of the European Film Commissions Network (until end of 2020). Mr Kontny has now joined Evil Doghouse Nordic AS as CEO and Executive producer.

The European Film Commissions Network is a non-profit association that supports and promotes the European film industry and culture. It currently represents 95 European film commissions and film institutions from 30 different countries.