With four nominations each, Susanne Bier's In a Better World and Aki Kaurismäki's French-speaking Le Havre tied for the second-most nods, alongside France's The Artist, Belgium's The Kid with a Bike, and the UK's The King's Speech.
The three Nordic titles are also competing in the top categories of Best Director and Best Script. Melancholia's two leading ladies, the French Charlotte Gainsbourg and US star Kirsten Dunst (awarded in Cannes 2011) are both running for Best Actress, while Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt (In a Better World) is competing in his category against Kaurismäki's regular French collaborator André Wilms (Le Havre), Colin Firth (The King's Speech), Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and Michel Piccoli (Habemus Papam). Melancholia is also vying for Best Editor (Molly Malene Stensgaard), Best Production Designer (Jette Lehmann) and Best Cinematography (Manuel Alberto Claro).
Within EFA's other nominations announced earlier, Susanne Bier's Oscar -winning In a Better World is also running for the People's Choice, the Danish youth drama Nothing's All Bad in the European Discovery section, and the EFA Short Film category has four Nordic candidates: Berik, Incident by the Bank, Little Children, Big Words and The Unliving.
The 24th European Film Awards will take place in Berlin on December 3, 2011. The awards are chosen by the European Film Academy, which has more than 2,500 members.