The European Film Academy has named Beki Probst, Marin Karmitz and Sandra den Hamer as the first recipients of its new Community Award for an Outstanding Contribution to European Film Culture.

The award, paying tribute to “a decisive and continuous contribution over many years to the development and expansion of European film culture”, will be presented during the European Film Awards weekend in Athens in January 2027.

The trio will be presented with the award on January 15, on the eve of the main ceremony at the traditional Welcome Night gala dinner, taking place this edition at the Acropolis Museum housing some 4,000 artefacts dating as far back as 1,200 BCE.

Probst is best known internationally as the founder of the Berlinale’s European Film Market, having entered the cinema world as the founder with her Swiss husband of the Queenie Cinemas in Berne in the 1960s, which grew into a successful chain of arthouse cinemas still existing today.

Born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul, Probst studied Law and Journalism and worked briefly as a film journalist.

From 1981 to 1988, she was the Berlinale delegate for Turkey and Greece and after initiating Locarno’s industry program, she was asked by Berlinale Director Moritz de Hadeln to start the European Film Market in 1988 in its current form.

Under her management, which continued into 2014, the EFM became one of the largest and most important international film market in Europe.

She has previously been feted with the Berlinale Camera, the Prix du cinéma Suisse, the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Karmitz is known as the founder of France’s independent exhibitor, producer, film financier and sales agent mk2 film. Born in Romania in 1938, Karmitz arrived in France as a refugee with his family in 1947.

After studies at the IDHEC film school in Paris, he worked as assistant director to the filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Jacques Rozier, Yannick Bellon and Pierre Kast. before directing his first short film, Nuit Noir, Calcutta, based on a screenplay by Marguerite Duras, in 1964.

In 1965, he worked with Samuel Beckett on the adaptation of Comédie. In the same year, the feature was selected to open the Venice International Film Festival and shocked audiences with its avant-garde material.

He launched mk2 Productions in 1967 and made his feature-length directorial debut with Seven Days Somewhere Else (1968), followed by Comrades (1970) and Blow for Blow (1972), which were screened at international festivals.

He opened his first cinema in Paris in 1974 in response to Blow for Blow, about a group of textiles workers who take their factory boss hostage in protest at the work conditions, being shut out of mainstream circuits.

In 40 years, he would produce 108 films and distribute over 350 in theatres, among them Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy, for which he received a nomination for the European Film Awards 1994, twelve films by Claude Chabrol, Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, the Taviani brothers, Theo Angelopoulos, Lucian Pintilié, Gus Van Sant, Ken Loach, Abbas Kiarostami, Hong Sang-Soo, Michael Haneke, Walter Salles and Xavier Dolan.

Den Hamer has an extensive track record in the Dutch film industry.

From 2007 to 2023, she was the director of the Netherlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. Under her leadership, the re-named Eye Filmmuseum opened a brand-new museum building and a new collection centre in Amsterdam.

Its eclectic programming includes large retrospectives, international conferences and as well as exhibitions, exploring the work and careers of filmmakers such as Bela Tarr, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Alex van Warmerdam among many others.

Before that, Sandra den Hamer worked for 23 years at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, including roles as co-ordinator of CineMart and the Hubert Bals Fund. From 1996 to 2007, she directed the festival.

She also served as President of the Board of the Association of European Cinematheques (A.C.E.). From 2023 to 2026. she was appointed interim executive director at the Netherlands Film Fund. Today she chairs the Board of the IDFA Institute and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

Gathering 5,700 members from more than 50 countries across Europe, the European Film Academy oversees the annual European Film Awards, which alternates taking place in its home city of Berlin and another European city, which is Athens this year.

The 39th ceremony marks the second time it is unfolding in its new January slot, after the academy decided to shift it from a long-running December slot to integrate the awards more fully into the wider awards season.

EXCLUSIVE: At least one BBC Studios indie will be throwing its hat in the ring to become the next producer of Doctor Who, with scripted boss Jamie Hall telling Deadline he “firmly believes” the entire BBC group should “reap the rewards” of the iconic sci-fi series.

Hall said “we’ve probably got one, potentially two companies” going for the multi-million pound tender, which if successful would bring the show back in house following two seasons made by Sony-owned Bad Wolf, starring Ncuti Gatwa. His comments followed BBC Studios CEO Tom Fussell recently saying BBC Studios would be applying “with gusto.”

Hall wouldn’t reveal the names of the indies but said he would “100%” be happy for more than one to enter the race.

BBC Studios runs an in-house drama label, which made Doctor Who before Bad Wolf, while it also owns several scripted indies outright including Baby Reindeer maker Clerkenwell Films, Happy Valley producer Lookout Point and Sherwood indie House Productions.

While he hasn’t seen his labels’ proposals, Hall said he has been “very open” and honest with those keen to go for the tender because the process is “quite an onerous undertaking and costs quite a bit of money.” “I have to make sure that it doesn’t become a distraction from the day job,” he added.

If two BBC Studios labels enter, they will likely join Line of Duty producer World Productions, whose boss Simon Heath has previously indicated his ITV Studios-owned outfit is interested. More thoughts from producers can be found in our future Doctor Who analysis from over the summer.

Published a fortnight ago, the tender calls for a “relevant, surprising, brave and inspiring” new vision for the show that should premiere in 2028-29. Notably, it said it is happy for indies to pitch a series using “episodic writers” rather than a “showrunner model,” which would do away with how Doctor Who has been made in recent years.

After several years with Bad Wolf and after the termination of the just-ended Disney+ co-pro deal, Hall was adamant that Doctor Who “should sit within the BBC and the whole group should reap the rewards of it.”

Questioned on what he would want to see from a revamped Doctor Who, Hall harked back to the days when Matt Smith and David Tennant were playing the Doctor.

“It feels to me that there is an opportunity to get back to what the core offering was in that time,” he added. “It will be off screen for two or three years and that gives the audience a great chance to have a break then rediscover, while also bringing a new audience.”

Netflix is returning the inmates to the Lock Upp jail.

A second season of the ‘captive reality’ series, whose full title is Lock Upp: Sach Yaa Sazaa has been ordered following Season 1’s breakout summer, where it placed number one of Netflix’s TV shows list within two days of the premiere and remained in the top ten for seven straight weeks.

The response to the show was so strong that five weekly episodes were expanded to six to satisfy demand, Netflix has said. It eventually amassed 50 million hours viewed in a month.

The show sees Indian celebrities thrown together in a jail cell, where they compete in challenges. What broke through with audiences was some of the more divisive characters discussing their public perception and confronting narratives that have surrounded them.

Netflix said Season 2 “build on that world, bringing audiences back inside the jail for another chapter where personalities collide, dynamics shift, and every secret has the potential to change the game.”

Riteish Deshmukh and Farah Khan return as hosts, with Balaji Telefilms producing. Show creator Ekta Kapoor is producing alongside Shobha Kapoor and Manisha Sharma, with Malaya Pradhan the showrunner.

“Lock Upp: Sach Yaa Sazaa became appointment viewing overnight,” said Monika Shergill, VP of Content at Netflix India. “Viewers invested, debated, and kept coming back. It captured the zeitgeist — not just as entertainment, but also as a space where celebrities talked about topics they rarely do, owned their choices and confronted past trauma.

“Ekta’s bold homegrown idea and the scaled adaptation on Netflix led to entertainment maxxing. Season 2 will be about recreating the same Netflix effect with many new surprises for our audiences.”

Ekta Kapoor, Jjoint Managing Director at Balaji, added: “Lock Upp: Sach Ya Sazaa on Netflix went far beyond what we imagined. The conversations, the inmates, and their most memorable moments continued to live with audiences even after the finale. That’s what makes the return of Lock Upp so exciting.

“The next season will take audiences back into a world they know, but with an entirely new set of stories, personalities, and surprises. And Farah and Riteish will continue to helm the Lock Upp as the formidable jailer duo, bringing their own energy, unpredictability, and dynamic to the next chapter.”

Lock Upp originally launched on ALTBalaji and MX Player in 2022, but was rebooted for Netflix.