Outgoing European Film Academy Chair Mike Downey Talks Body’s Future: “We Are Less Than Half The Age Of AMPAS & Still Growing” – Q&A

Mike Downey‘s time as chairman of the European Film Academy comes to an end this weekend at its 38th European Film Awards in Berlin, following his announcement in December that he was stepping down.

The producer, writer and all-round European cinema mover and shaker, has been involved in the institution for more than 25 years.

He joined the board in the late 1990s, a decade after the Berlin-based institution was launched by Ingmar Bergman and 40 other filmmakers in response to concerns over the future of European cinema. His involvement has the spanned the presidencies of Wim Wenders (1996-2020) Agnieszka Holland (2020-2024) and incumbent Juliette Binoche.

During this time, Downey has witnessed the Academy’s transition from a body with a few hundred members oscillating around the European Film Awards, to an organisation with more than 5,000 members and a year-round program.

He has also been at the forefront of the EFA’s support of dissident filmmakers such as Ukraine’s Oleg Sentsov, with the body campaigning tirelessly for his release after he was sentenced in 2015 to 20 years in prison in Russia on trumped up charges.

Downey’s departure as chair coincides with awards moving to January from their long-time slot in December. Ahead of Saturday night ceremony, the film industry veteran talked to Deadline about his time at EFA; the thinking behind the awards date change, and why it is a pivotal time for the Academy.

DEADLINE: When, how and why you got involved in the European Film Academy?

MIKE DOWNEY: When I began working as a producer in London, I got to know the late, great Nik Powell very well, especially during the time when he was producing the awards event in London back in 1998. It was the crazy year when Roberto Benigni burst onto the stage to receive his Best Film award for Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella), where he joked about the presenter and audience, saying, “I am amusing myself very much,” and inviting everyone to “sleep together tonight,”. He was ecstatic, hugging presenters and making playful, and indeed suggestive comments.  It was my first awards, and it was at the Old Vic. At the time, I thought, “This this is something I would really like to be a part of.”  Anyone who knows Nik knows how persuasive he can be. “Come on Mike,’ he said in his idiosyncratic estuary drawl. “You have to stand for the board you’re the most European of all the people I know in the British film industry – and you even speak half a dozen European languages.” I said, “OK, I’m in! Where do I sign?” 

DEADLINE: What kind of body did you encounter. Was there a sense it was there for the long haul or an organization created in a certain time in history?

DOWNEY: Joining an organisation that had Wim Wenders as president, along with Hungarian filmmaking legend Istvan Szabo, Zentropa luminary Vibeke Vindelov, Oscar winning director Volker Schloendorff, one did have a sense that it was a body of status and influence within the industry, and it certainly had the heft and the prestige and the weight behind it. That meant when the academy board spoke, not just its members listened, the whole European film industry paid attention. So, there was for sure a sense of history and heritage.  This continued when such heavyweights as Andrzej Żuławski, Sir Ben Kingsley, Krzystof Zanussi, Jim Sheridan, Dieter Kosslick joined our ranks later. Even Nikita Mikhalkov was a board member for a while.  I remember one time he arrived with his entourage and proceeded to give a lecture to the board as to how his henchman had ‘sorted out’ video pirates in the Moscow market by burning down their market stall. He then invited the whole board to Russia for an important conference on how to deal with piracy in the film industry in Europe.  Go figure.  But seriously, at that time there was a real sense that the body was in it for the long haul and building itself up on the shoulders of the giants who founded it.

DEADLINE: What were the first things you tried to do at the body?

DOWNEY: Well, to start with of course, in the face of the collective experience of my extraordinary co-board members, which also included the future boss of the Venice Biennale Roberto Cicutto, Quinzaine founder and director Pierre-Henri Deleau, the genius that was Dusan Makavejev and producing andacting legend Humbert Balsan. I would be being economical with the truth if I didn’t admit that I was quiet as a church mouse for the first year. Listening.  Learning. Drinking it in. There was a lot of wisdom in the room, a massive amount of passion and I sensed that these were people on a mission. I had a huge amount of respect for that. I felt really proud that there was no self-interest in the room – that these were people who wanted to know what they could do for the academy and not what the academy could do for them. There was certainly a powerful feeling that there was a huge amount of potential for change on the academy board at that time. I do remember us spending an inordinately large amount of time refining and streamlining and adapting the selection process to make it fit for the 21st century and well into the noughties and the teens and this tweaking of the selection process remained a prominent feature.  I always said to myself that if I ever became chair, I would work hard to find a selection process that didn’t need quite so much tweaking and twiddling every year, and I believe I have finally been successful in that.

DEADLINE: Are there any ceremonies that are particularly memorable for you?

DOWNEY: Key moments for me would include in 2007, when EFA President Wim Wenders’ tribute to Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, both of whom had died earlier in the year. In 2014 in Riga, I convinced Masha Alyokhina from Pussy Riot to come back from Australia, and she gave a powerful speech about Oleg Sentsov, who was serving time in a similar gulag that she had been incarcerated in. In 2018, in Seville the extraordinary standing ovation for Ralph Fiennes, as a recipient of European Achievement in World Cinema. He wondered aloud, “Can I be English and European?” and answered himself immediately. “Emphatically, yes!” “It is depressing and distressing”, he said of the current crisis in Europe, adding “in England now there is only the noise of division.”  I have a family relationship to Werner Herzog, so in 2019 Berlin, when soprano Alexandra Hutton performed an aria written and composed by Dietrich Brüggemann for Werner I was particularly moved. Add to those having the privilege of presenting my friends Bela Tarr and Elia Sulieman with their European Achievement in World Cinema Awards. I also thought it was sad, that in 2020 Berlin, in the online ceremony during the Corona lockdown, we couldn’t give the sendoff we wanted to give in farewell to Wim and Marion after 33 years dedicated to EFA – because of the pandemic.  This will be one of my regrets.  Because their service was above and beyond the call of duty.

But the highpoint, of all awards, was, after many years campaigning across Europe for his release, roping in people like Ai Wei Wei, I was finally able to welcome Oleh Sentsov into his European film home in Berlin.  It had been a long haul and the emotional moment occurred weeks after Sakharov Prize laureate Sentsov was released from a Russian prison following a five-year, politically motivated imprisonment. That was a real full circle moment.

DEADLINE: For a time, the UK was quite involved in the awards, thanks partly to Nik Powell chairing the Academy from 1996 to 2003, with the ceremony even taking place as you recounted in London’s Old Vic theatre one year. Do these ties with the UK still remain?

DOWNEY: The do and are very much driven by our active membership there which currently ranks third in size after Germany and Italy. As many people will remember, I was a very vocal public critic of Brexit, describing it as a “disastrous” move for the UK film industry. As a leader within the EFA, I have actively worked to ensure that British filmmakers remain integrated into the European film community despite the UK’s departure from the European Union.  Despite this massive body blow, during my leadership, I have taken pains to consistently reaffirm that our definition of “European” includes both EU and non-EU countries, reinforcing the inclusion of British, as well as Israeli and Palestinian, filmmakers.

DEADLINE: One challenge has been fully incorporating smaller former Soviet bloc countries which can sometimes be overshadowed by big territories such as France, Germany and Spain. As a longtime Croatian resident, who has produced with a lot of Central and Eastern European territories, what have you done to ease this situation?

DOWNEY: One of the key issues that I campaigned for re-election to the chairmanship was on diversity and inclusion.  This can mean many things but one of the main issues for me was to have a fair democratic representation of our membership and to see that their voices are heard. Indeed, in one of the major overhauls of my mandate, the Academy restructured its board starting in 2024 to significantly increase representation from Eastern and Southeastern Europe, aiming for 50% of board seats to come from those regions by 2025, up from 25% previously, to achieve greater geographical and ethnic diversity across Europe. Board members are now selected from 15 distinct regions, ensuring a more balanced voice for different parts of the continent in EFA’s management. We have two board members representing transnational ethnic communities (Sámi populations of Europe) as well as transnational minorities (currently Sinti/Roma).  And on the subject of diversity, the 2026 European Film Awards shortlist had 27 out of 67 films (about 40%) directed by women – which means we are on the right track – not quite there – but soon…

DEADLINE: The founding members’ original reason for launching the academy was because they felt European cinema and culture was under threat. How do you feel about this today?

DOWNEY: For almost two-and-a-half decades now, I’ve been able to play a part in positioning European cinema on the world’s stage through a leadership role on the board of the European Film Academy. I genuinely believe that there is a strong sense of solidarity among us, in the European film industry, a sense of social and political responsibility and political resistance that we share and practice.  I also am convinced that European cinema has truly come of age as it brings to the fore compellingly authored films, very much the opposite of the Hollywood behemoths who seem to have, for the most part has run out of ideas and got lost in the franticness of franchises, reboots and knockoffs.

Nevertheless, the world is changing, and we need to be very much on the alert because current popular rhetoric, ideologies and narratives do not see culture and art as a crucial part of the health of a society.  If there is one thing going forwards that our academy and film community needs to do it is to remember the absolutely vital role the Academy plays in resisting these societal tendencies. We must as defenders of culture and creativity remain on the front foot to be flexible and ready and as independent and self-sufficient as possible.  For we enter dangerous times as, for example, when the AfD comes knocking at the door of the Berlin Senate, the EFA’s most significant funder, and as the various right wing, populist flag waving nationalists get closer and closer to the centre of power in so many European democracies.

DEADLINE: Although it is anchored in a population of some 745 million people across 52 nations with strong cultural ties, the awards have never taken off in the same way as the Oscars, Baftas or Golden Globes, why do you think this is?

DOWNEY: Well, this is not such a tricky conundrum: the European Film Awards aren’t as popular as the Oscars due to Hollywood’s massive global marketing, English language dominance, and unified market, contrasting with Europe’s fragmented, multilingual film scene where no single award captures widespread attention, compounded by an emphasis on art house cinema and cultural creativity with less glamour and media focus on EFAs compared to the globally recognized red-carpet spectacle of the Oscars.  Similarly, the Golden Globes focus on English language fare aside from the obvious. 

As of the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) reported net assets of $988 million, up from $921 million the previous year, with Oscar-related revenue growing to $150 million. In addition to that for their 100th anniversary, AMPAS has announced Academy100 a new $500-million global campaign aimed at extending the organization’s influence worldwide and diversifying its revenue streams.  The European Film Academy is a certified charity and has a budget not far over €2,000,000. I could go deeper into the reasons of cultural and linguistic fragmentation and cultural dominance, and the fact that European stars lack the same global reach, and EFA ceremonies, while prestigious within Europe, don’t match Hollywood’s glamour or marketing muscle. We all know this.

DEADLINE: Does this mean it is failure? 

DOWNEY: No, not in any way at all.  We are less than half of the age of AMPAS and we are still growing at a rapid pace.  The last five years have seen incredible leaps forward in membership and in footprint.   We are holding our own creatively and artistically – and this is what counts.  Europe is certainly on the front foot – it’s at the box office as well.  If cinema admissions are anything to go by in the age of the streamer, Europe and the US are neck on their respective turfs with $8.4 billion and $8.5 billion respectively in 2024 – and 2025 looking similar. So, there’s everything to play for. 

The adoption of the Culture Compass for Europe, the first EU-wide strategy for culture in nearly a decade, which sets out a vision for the development of the cultural sector at the European level and outlines what the Commission plans to do to support I, gives hope that some kind of balance may yet be possible, at least in mainland Europe for the future of European cinema. In Europe, we celebrate cultural diversity, and this vision allows it to be safeguarded and to an extent reimagined, providing rich pastures for artists and cultural professionals to create, innovate and push boundaries.

DEADLINE:  What is the thinking behind moving the European Film Awards to January from December?

DOWNEY: This change puts the European Film Awards and, indeed, the best of European cinema in pole position during what is always a highly competitive awards period. And as the  European Film Awards takes this step up, our date change automatically means a prolongation of our recent initiative, the Month of European Film – radically transforming into the European Award Season, the season at the end of the calendar year during which the Academy celebrates European cinema in 45 countries simultaneously – 100 European cities participating, and a record amount of 16,000 screenings. We have extended the idea to cinemas in Hong Kong, Santiago de Chile, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). The Academy’s strategy to re-position the European Film Awards after almost four decades in December marks a fundamentally positive change as the event finally lands where it should be: front and center in the heart of the awards season, where it can create maximum impact for European candidates, as well as enhance the Academy’s role as a significant player in the global awards game. To paraphrase Paul Revere, and Oscar winning UK writer Colin Welland – “The Europeans are Coming!”

DEADLINE: As you hand over the baton, what do you think are your greatest achievements at EFA?

DOWNEY: That’s a tough one. My achievements are the achievements of the collective and more specifically speaking, the management and team of the academy, which was first led with verve and passion by Marion Doering for most of its existence. But I really think that one of my key achievements has been in the hiring and embedding of her successor Matthijs Wouter Knol.  Marion would never be an easy act to follow but it has turned out well.  The human assets of the academy are the most important, and I hope my successors realise this  and understand that it is the most important thing to put trust in one’s human assets. And by those, I mean the extraordinary leadership of Matthijs, who with Jurgen heading up EFA productions, are two pillars of the organisation who can be depended upon to ensure the future of the Academy and to allow the Academy to rise higher.

But now we’ve got the modesty bit out of the way, continued emphasis on education has always been a major cornerstone of my strategic goals for EFA hence the founding of the European Film Club, development of and investment in the Young Audience Award as well as the European Universities Film Award. Add to that the special breaks we give to film makers under 26 we have a 360-degree education policy. The mobilisation of the academy and its names and its resources as an agent for change has always been top of my agenda.  In the wake of mine and the academy’s role in the Oleg Sentsov campaign, we made those amateurish experiences into a formal organisation when we founded the International Coalition for Film Makers at Risk (ICFR) set up to defend filmmakers and their right to continue their work in freedom and safety.  We extended the role of the ICFR when Russia invaded Ukraine, with the Emergency Fund for Ukrainian Filmmakers (EFF) in response to the 2022 invasion, which was set up to provided micro-grants for urgent needs like relocation, medical aid, and legal support, donating over €500,000 to filmmakers in need.

In a bid to become more financially self-sufficient as well as to extend the reach of the academy I’ve encouraged a big membership drive and we have had in the last couple of years a 30% increase in membership, reaching over 5,380 members across 52 countries by 2025,  at the same time ensuring diversity by a radical restructuring of its board for better geographical representation.

DEADLINE: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the body?

DOWNEY: The rise of extreme-right and far-right populist movements, accelerating through 2024 and 2025, has introduced a significant “culture war” dimension to politics, where artistic expression is frequently attacked as a threat to traditional, nationalistic, or conservative values. This trend is characterized by the targeting of public funding for the arts, the installation of loyalists in cultural institutions, and the promotion of a “national” narrative that excludes perspectives on LGBTQ+ rights, human rights, racial justice, and critical history.  Right now is the time to start arming the European Film Academy against these potential threats.  And that means aiming towards financial self-sufficiency.  This can be done in a number of ways. I have discussed them already with the management and this should be their priority. The other challenge is to defend the idea of excellence versus diversity.  It is all very well to create a broad based open and transparent body that would like to be totally inclusive.  Nevertheless, when we are looking for excellence in the film selection, it is patronising and frankly fake to introduce ideas of positive discrimination in the pursuit of just making sure everyone is included. This is an issue which needs defending and in the current selection procedure these tenets are enshrined in gold.  I’d hate to see that undone.