The European Commission announced that the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi will be awarded with the first EU MEDIA prize in a ceremony celebrated during the 65th Cannes Film Festival, on the 20 of May.

Asghar Farhadi, known for his films “About Elly” (which won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009) and “A Separation” (which won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2011 and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012), together with the producer Alexandre Mallet-Guy (Memento Films Production) won the first EU MEDIA award for their new project which will be filmed in France in French next autumn. In 2011, the EU MEDIA Talent Prize was share for two women, the scriptwriters Virág Zomborácz (Hungary) and Hanna Sköld (Sweden) for their film scripts for “Afterlife” and “Granny's Dancing on the Table”.

The Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, Ms Androulla Vassiliou showed herself proud to give this award to Mr Farhadi for this film project which has a strong cultural identity and illustrates the openness of European culture. She also added that with Asghar Farhadi paving the way, it will be provided more support for artists who do not work in their home countries and promises to facilitate transnational cultural activities organised between Member States and third countries.

This first EU MEDIA prize marks the start of a new phase for the MEDIA programme for the period 2014-2020 entitled Creative Europe. The MEDIA prize is awarded for the best project with box-office potential submitted by a screenwriter and a production company. The project is selected from the applications submitted for development support for 2012.