The award is organised by the EU parliament and the European Film Academy. Audiences across the EU and MEPs voted for the winner out of three films nominated in December last year.

Collective--which follows a group of journalists as they uncover healthcare corruption in the wake of a nightclub fire--beat competitors Another Round (Denmark/Netherlands/Sweden) and Corpus Christi (Poland/France).

“I think this is an award most of all for the victims and their families for whom justice has still not been served in Romania, five years later,” said Romanian director Alexander Nanau, praising everyone who had contributed to uncovering the fraud.

“It is your duty to support our citizens and to regulate the spending on culture and education and to protect journalists,” Nanau told MEPs in the plenary. “It is not an accident that in several countries culture and education is not only underfunded but is systematically prevented from flourishing.”

Nanau said the vote shows that people want to fight corruption and want a free press, saying that European citizens shouldn’t give up as MEPs with their vote had shown they have their support.

“This is a significant moment for culture in Europe as we establish this contact with our public opinion,” David Sassoli, president of the European Parliament said. “Right from the beginning of the pandemic, culture and entertainment were hit very hard,” he said.

“I think we’ve all realised how much we need culture, how much we need cinema, how important it is to our wellbeing in society. We need to be very vigilant to ensure that cinema in Europe can once again play that fundamental role,” Sassoli said about art during the pandemic.

“Collective […] shows how important investigative journalism is for freedom, independence, for freedom of speech. We need free media. We always need a free press,” Sassoli said.

Co-produced by Luxembourg’s Samsa Film and Bernard Michaux, Collective was nominated for an Oscar and a Bafta but in both cases lost to Netflix’s My Octopus Teacher. It was listed by former US president Barack Obama as one of his top films of 2020.