The best of the best

Prize-giving ceremony in the Russian embassy, Unter den Linden, Berlin. (twb)

During the past year a universe of programmes and productions have been broadcast and published. 235 of them, the very best, made it into this year's competition, 5835 voting sheets and 29.175 ratings were processed. The juries have spoken. These are the best of the best.

Success makes you lonesome they say. That's rubbish of course. You came here alone, and you go home accompanied by a bull. Well done!

Category	Title	Country
TV documentary	"Meet the Fokkens"	Netherlands
TV fiction	"We'll Take Manhattan"	UK
TV fiction serial	"The Bridge"	Sweden
TV current affairs	"Permission to Engage"	Netherlands
TV Iris (best multicultural TV programme)	"Special Flight"	Switzerland
TV marketplace of innovation	"Basta"	Belgium
Prix Genève Europe (best TV fiction script)	"Inside"	Netherlands
Languages Through Lenses (students' short films on learning languages)	"Snow White"	Netherlands
Radio documentary	"Holiday for Life – European Dementia Patients in Care in Thailand"	Austria
Radio investigation	"Radio Simoom"	Sweden
Radio fiction	"Category 5: How I Rescued Fats Domino From Hurricane Katrina"	Switzerland
Radio fiction serial	"1-Minute Small"	Netherlands
Radio music (programmes on music)	"Warsaw Variations"	UK
Radio marketplace of innovation	"Hackney Hear"	UK
Online	"The Art of Pho"	Netherlands
Best online innovation	diy.fm – "Radio à la Carte"	Switzerland
Prix Europa lifetime achievement award	Prof. Regina Ziegler	Germany

Blind date

"Piste Perdu", DR Denmark

A blind date at the ski lift, arranged by a friend: Mia is to meet Martin, no expert skier but an off-slope party king. Martin learns that Mia's sister is undergoing psychiatric treatment, and Mia recognizes him as the man who had raped her sister. Mia makes Martin go down a steep hill, where he darts into a rock, and leaves him there, injured and helpless. "Piste Perdu" (DR Denmark) is one out of ten pieces of a whole "blind dates" series. Short, sparing, and sardonic.

Saving Fats Domino

"Category 5: How I Rescued Fats Domino
From Hurricane Katrina", SRF Switzerland

When the hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, the R'n'B and rock'n'roll legend Fats Domino was reported missing and believed dead. A few days later he turned up safe and sound. So much for the facts.

"Category 5: How I Rescued Fats Domino From Hurricane Katrina" ("Category 5: Wie ich Fats Domino aus dem Hurrikan Katrina rettete", SRF) tells the fictional story of Dudeck, a hyped up German hypochondriac who makes it his end-of-life mission to find the Fat Man in the flooded city. A trip from comedy to slapstick and back.

From Russia with suspense

A dead body lies on the floor of a well-respected publishing house, and soon after the police have started investigating, crime scene photos leak out to the internet. They show a decisive detail: an office pass protruding from the dead man's pocket, and the deputy director's hand secretly removing it. "From Heaven to Earth" (Radio Russia): From Russia with suspense.

Forbidden love

1941. Reykjavík is occupied by British troops. "The Situation" (RÚV, Iceland) tells the story of the 16-year old Gudrún falling in love with Bob, a 18-year old soldier, despite Icelandic laws forbidding youths any contact with the foreigners. As Gudrún's and Bob's love persists bad luck is closing in on her.

Doom

"Air", RBB/ARD

Human beings, believed to be creation's crowning glory, are about to dig their own grave. Pollution destroys the earth.

German art students took the four elements earth, fire, water and air, to which they added a fifth, ice. They created five short scenarios of a planet in terminal disorder. "Air" ("Luft", RBB/ARD) takes us to the abandoned zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Few people live here, a couple of militia men and old people waiting to die in their run down farm houses. Maria, pregnant and bleeding, asks Corvin, the young doctor, to help her give birth to her child. The child, of course, is dead.

Abyss

"Foreign Bodies", Polish Radio

Poland in the 1980s. Adam and his friends are fighting for freedom of speech, against the communist regime. Thirty years later, Adam has become Eva, discriminated for her transsexuality, avoided even by her own son. "Foreign Bodies" (Polish Radio) is a blow-by-blow tale of one life, two genders, and the abyss of loneliness.

Day five: Radio fiction

"Hans Flesch": Memorial plate in the Haus des Rundfunks.

"Hans Flesch" is one of the names on the memorial plate in the main hall of the Haus des Rundfunks. Hans Flesch, one of Germany's broadcasting pioneers, produced and aired the first piece of German radio fiction on October 24, 1924. "Zauberei auf dem Sender" can still be listened to (new staging by the Hessischer Rundfunk 1962, mp3). A perfect day for listening to its descendants. Day five: Radio fiction.

Where is the blogger?

Radio documentary jury, discussing. (Jan Kopetzky)

Picture puzzle: Where is the blogger?

Beloved birds

"Documentary On One: The Secret Chicken Society", RTÉ

We breed chicken, we feed them, butcher them, eat them. But there are others: farmers who love their birds, look after them and spend a whole lifetime breeding even more perfect chicken.

Jenny and Willie O'Mara are Irish farmers about to take part in Ireland's national poultry show. They shampoo their pets in the shower, dry them with a hairdryer (I actually didn't know what hairdryers are for) in order to make them champions. "Documentary On One: The Secret Chicken Society" (RTÉ Radio 1) is lighthearted and brillantly composed, telling an unexpectedly hilarious story of people loving their chickens just because they are beautiful birds. Not just food.

Wrongs of the past

"The Judge and the Victims" - The Ardous battle
for Ghetto Pensions, BR/ARD

Are jews who were forced to live in ghettoes in Nazi Germany entitled to pension? For decades German courts refuse nine out of ten applications. Jan-Robert von Renesse, a judge at the North-Rhine-Westphalian Social Court, was determined to change this. He proved that in most cases the legal requirements were fulfilled, and thousands of former ghetto inhabitants - or their families, as many of them had died in the meantime - came into their own. The insistent judge on the other hand, from one day to another, was taken off all the ghetto cases. No concidence.

"The Judge and the Victims - The Arduous Battle for Ghetto Pensions" (Bayerischer Rundfunk BR/ARD, BR Bayern 2) is a beautifully crafted tale of a penny-pinching bureaucracy, highly reluctant in dealing with the wrongs of the past, and of a rebellious mind with a vision beyond the wording of the law.

Against their will

"Crossing Continents: Forced Sterilisation
in Uzbekistan", BBC

Usbekistan is a country in isolation. Here the meaning of life is having a big family, and the Uzbek population is growing fast. Allegations say that the government is sterilizing women, against their will and even often without their knowledge. An investigation. "Crossing Continents: Forced Sterilisation in Uzbekistan" (BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4) may not be radio art, not even a radio documentary. But it is a shocking report on despotic practices in a forgotten country.

Desperado

"Sense and Sensibility", NRK

Bjarte Berntsen loves driving motorbikes. Fast, way too fast. Long ago Bjarte has been banned from driving forever, but he simply does not care. He is aggressive, a desperado, feared and hated for his ruthless driving. Yet, one man supports him: a well-respected high school teacher, local politician - and his father.

"Sense and Sensibility" (NRK) takes us along Bjarte's long path from ADHD diagnosis to extreme sports, drug abuse and to ending up as a modern outlaw. It lets us look deep down into a troubled mind on the brink of psychosis, to a point where justice and psychiatry are helpless. The story is thrilling, full of almost physical aggression, leaving its listener restless and perplexed.

Driving for a better future

"Let's Drive for Your Native Land", Russia

Moscow, December 4, 2011: Elections for the Russian parliament, the starting point of a political grass-roots protest in Russia. Civil observers move between polling stations, and Mikhail, a former businessman and oppositionist, is one of the drivers. He has grown tired of fighting against oppression, but he keeps driving anyway. Why?

"Let's Drive for Your Native Land" (Foundation for Independent Radio, Webradio Podstantsiya) is a report rather than a radio documentary. Even if its tone remains grave and educational it sheds light on what media refer to as "the opposition" - in a country pretending to be democratic.

Unspoken words

"The price of exile", ACSR, RTBF, La Première

Belgium, land of hope: Rabia, born in Morocco, is determined to reach out for a brighter future and leaves her children and her country behind. Yet paradise is not free of charge.

"The price of exile" ("Le prix de l'exile", Atelier de Création Sonore Radiophonique ACSR, RTBF, La Première) is a carefully crafted programme about great expectations shattering on a social ground we tend to ignore. "On ne parle pas beaucoup", one of the protagonists says: "The price of exile" is a quiet and slow-paced piece about unspoken words, about loneliness, love, anger and grief, and about two worlds seemingly light years apart. Even if a number of underlying stories remain untold: "The price of exile" is a remarkable portrait of a family that has been torn apart.

Day two: Radio documentary

This house gave birth to the German radio documentary half a century ago. In its corridors two doyens of the genre, Peter Leonhard Braun and Aldo Gardini, can be met these days. Therefore day two: Radio documentary.

And the winners are...

Prix Europa 2011 award ceremony: The winners on stage. (twb)

So these are the winners of this year's Prix Europa, that amazing media festival awarding the best of the best public service productions: Congratulations! Well done! By today you belong to Europe's best media makers.

(And tidy up your desk – the Prix Europa bull will need some space.)

• TV Documentary: The Snow Ball War Darkness (Norway), Enemy Engagement (Germany)
• TV Current Affairs: Lost Honour – The Story of the Sürücü Family (Germany)
• TV Fiction: Sherlock – A Study In Pink (United Kingdom), The Strongest Man in Holland (The Netherlands)
• Prix Geneve Europe (best TV fiction script): Combat Girls (Germany)
• TV Iris (best multicultural TV programme): Winter of Love (The Netherlands)
• Languages Through Lenses (students' short films on learning languages): The Importance of Speaking Two Languages (Italy)
• Radio Documentary: My Grandfather’s Doublelife (Denmark), Ladies of the Manor – Scenes from a Marriage of Convenience (Austria)
• Radio Fiction: Tacet (Silence 2) (Germany), Home Goal (France)
• Radio Music (programmes on music): WDR 3 Favourites (Germany)
• Online: Nowhere Safe (France)
• Lifetime Achievement Award Radio: Raina Konstantinova (EBU)

The Top Five

Whatever production has made it to the Prix Europa, you will agree, belongs to the best productions there are. Yet, not any of them can win one of the bulls. So here is what the jurys have considered the top five of any category, the very essence of this year's Prix Europa.

Within minitz

Minitz press conference with Doris Ahnen, minister of
education, Rheinland-Pfalz. (SWR/ARD)

News for kids aged from 8 to 12: "Minitz" is a crossmedia TV, radio, web and mobile programme presented by the German SWR and ARD. Three news topics are being produced every day - on politics, ecology, history, economy, on stars and animals. In the "Tim asks Tom" series the news anchorman Tom explains complex matters and connects them to today's news. Another part of the site is the "School for Reporters" where children can publish their own articles, photos or videos as well as create their own avatar which then will present their news. Charming.

Online battlefield

Historic battle simulation, minute by minute. (DR)

"The Battle at the Dybbøl 1864" is a landmark in Denmark's history. In a nationalist uproar Denmark declares war on the union of German countries. 5000 soldiers are killed, and Denmark is defeated. The state is reduced to half its size and will suffer from the consequences for generations.

This year the Danish radio DR decided to broadcast a minute-by-minute acoustic simulation of the central battle. The airplay was backed up by a website with background material, live blogging, interactive graphics and an interactive map allowing users to submit personal stories. A historic tragedy brought to life by means of the New Media: This is what history lessons 2.0 might look like.