Ahead of the European Film Awards ceremony held in Berlin on January 17, award-winning filmmakers Jafar Panahi, Oliver Laxe, Mascha Schilinski and Joachim Trier will participate in a live discussion hosted by DW, The Hollywood Reporter and the European Film Academy on January 16 at 3:45 p.m. CET. The discussion can be viewed here:

European cinema is having a moment — and it's not a nostalgic one. At a time when much of the global film industry feels locked into franchises, algorithms and intellectual property, Europe's most vital filmmakers are pushing in the opposite direction: toward risk, politics, intimacy and formal freedom.

"European Cinema on the Edge" brings that moment into sharp focus with an in-depth roundtable conversation featuring four of the year's most talked-about directors: Jafar Panahi ("It Was Just an Accident"), Mascha Schilinski ("Sound of Falling"), Oliver Laxe ("Sirat") and Joachim Trier ("Sentimental Value").

All four are European Film Award nominees and Oscar contenders, and all four have made films that sit — aesthetically, politically and emotionally — on the edge.

From Panahi's clandestine filmmaking under Iran's authoritarian regime to Laxe's genre-defying desert odyssey, from Schilinski's generational reckoning with German history to Trier's Bergman-inflected meditation on art, family and compromise, the discussion moves beyond awards buzz to the larger questions shaping cinema today.

Is making films still a political act? Who are these movies really for? And what happens to European cinema as streaming power, right-wing populism and artificial intelligence reshape the cultural landscape? This is "European Cinema on the Edge" — a collaboration between DW, The Hollywood Reporter and the European Film Academy — a conversation about what cinema can be, when it refuses to play it safe.

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier