The gloss of British triumph at this year’s European Film Awards was tarnished a little by the fact that none of our prize winners were able to make it over to the ceremony, held in Berlin last weekend.

British film was well represented in the nominations, including a clutch of nods for the Last King Of Scotland, Control and The Queen; nominations for British actors Ben Wishaw (for Perfume) and Marianne Faithful (for Irina Palm) and six out of the 13 films competing in the short film category. But on the night it was the already copiously garlanded The Queen which carried off the statuettes: Alexandre Desplat won European Composer for his score, and Helen Mirren added yet another Best Actress prize to her collection. The always gracious and glamorous actress paid tribute to European cinema in a recorded message – “It’s where I personally get my inspiration” – but clearly, in the UK at least, the European Film Academy has a way to go before it has the same pull as its American equivalent.

But Mirren was not the most high-profile no-show. That honour went to Jean Luc Godard, whose Lifetime Achievement Award was to have been one of the key events of the ceremony, a fitting tribute with which to mark the 20th birthday of the EFA. Sadly the prickly Godard changed his mind about attending at the last minute, saying in an interview with a German newspaper shortly before that he didn’t know why he was being handed a career award since none of his films had been a commercial success. A visibly disappointed Wim Wenders, the current president of the European Film Academy, recalled watching his first Godard film, aged 20, and stumbling out of the cinema dazed and blinking having watched the same film seven times in succession. “We didn’t give the award in order to make a song and dance,” he said plaintively. “We wanted to show appreciation. In person.”

The most popular prize winners were well chosen: two small, low budget films which could be genuinely boosted by their EFA prizes. The Band’s Visit, a beautifully-observed Israeli-French co-production, won best actor for its star, Sasson Gabai. And the Cannes Palme D’Or winner, the stunning Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days scored both Best Director for Cristian Mungiu and Best Film. A delighted Mungiu, aware that a film about two young women trying to procure an illegal abortion is not the easiest sell, mused optimistically on the possibility that the prizes might encourage people to watch his film.

In a ceremony which lasted for nearly three long hours, the high points were often the moments when the well-oiled machine looked likely to come crashing off the rails. Host Jan Josef Liefers contributed a couple of howlers. Following his co-host Emmanuelle Beart’s opening address, he snickered, “Let the women speak first and agree with whatever they say.” And during an ill-advised link which required him to bounce around the pan-European audience demanding translations of famous film titles, he asked Liv Ulman for the Swedish for Scenes From A Marriage. “I’m Norwegian actually,” she replied quietly, as tumbleweed blew across the stage.

But the most magnificent moment of potentially disastrous chaos came when cinematographer and party animal Chris Doyle bounded onto the stage, howling at the house band, The Leningrad Cowboys, and announcing joyfully that he was given a script but he threw it away. Doyle proceeded to lurch alarmingly around the stage and massacre a laboured analogy about the film business and the sex industry. Announcing the winner of a career achievement award, Doyle neglected to give the winner’s name and instead screamed, “You f***** wonderful whore, come up here and take a prize.” The winner, cinematographer Michael Balhaus, handled the situation with admirable dignity. The punch line came minutes later when veteran actress Jeanne Moreau took to the stage to announce the Best Film. In a throaty growl, she flirted with all the directors and producers in the room, then added playfully that she for one was “proud to be a ‘f***** wonderful whore’.”

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