Melancholia grabs eight nominations at European film awards

He recently took a vow of (media) silence after causing controversy with comments about Hitler at this year's Cannes film festival, but the Danish arch-provocateur Lars von Trier can take comfort from news today that his latest film is doing the talking for him. Melancholia , Von Trier's claustrophobic tale of a woman's struggle with mental illness as the world around her appears to be on the verge of destruction, is leading the charge for the European film awards with a total of eight nominations in just nine categories . Von Trier himself gets a nod in the best director category, where he is up against fellow Dane Suzanne Bier for her Oscar-winning In a Better World , the Dardenne brothers for Cannes hit The Kid with a Bike , Aki Kaurismäki for Le Havre and Britain's Tom Hooper for the Academy Award-winning The King's Speech . Melancholia will compete with Michel Hazanavicius's Hollywood-set black and white silent film The Artist , The Kid With a Bike, In a Better World and The King's Speech for best film. Von Trier's female leads, Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, have both been nominated for best actress. The King's Speech, Hooper's period drama about King George VI's struggle to overcome a debilitating stammer, also received a nod for best actor in the form of Oscar-winner Colin Firth. There was more British success for Tilda Swinton, who picked up a best actress nomination for her portrayal of a mother coping with her son's penchant for evil in We Need to Talk About Kevin . In terms of nominations, five films tied for the second-highest number of nominations with four each: The Artist, The Kid With a Bike, In a Better World, The King's Speech and Le Havre. The last of these , which also debuted in competition at Cannes, is a comedy drama about a French shoeshiner who tries to save an immigrant child. The European film awards will be staged in Berlin on 2 December. Award recipients are decided by members of the 2,500-strong European Academy; past winners of the best film award include Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer , Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon , Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days , Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others and Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her .