Stephen Daldry and Mike Downey
Irish-UK Producer and European Film Academy Chairman Mike Downey was honoured September 17 with the Kristián Lifetime Achievement Award at the opening of the Prague International Film Festival – Febiofest. The award was presented by British film and theatre director, and three times Academy Award nominee, Stephen Daldry, who also co-originated the Netflix series The Crown (exec producer 2016-2019) which bagged 11 Emmys September 19.
“It’s not just Mike’s fearlessness and tenacity as a film producer that we are celebrating tonight,” said Daldry, “But his decades long work as a humanitarian and fighter for the rights of filmmakers all over the world, as the chairman of the European Film Academy, and one of the founders of the International Coalition for Film Makers at Risk, as well as establishing film awards across the globe for Amnesty International including at the Berlinale and also here in this city of Prague at this very festival.”
Daldry also touched on the subject of their long personal friendship as well as the importance for the international film community to react to the ongoing tragedy in Afghanistan for artists being persecuted by the Taliban.
“In the difficult times which we are all experiencing,” said Downey, “I’m delighted that my career as a European producer and as Chair of the European Film Academy is being recognised in this way, by the Prague International Film Festival. I have made half a dozen films in Prague, and have great memories of living in the city.”
“We have two major international tsunamis of human rights abuses in both Myanmar and Afghanistan,” he continued. “So I would like to accept this award and dedicate it to those filmmakers who are still behind bars in Myanmar. The coup of February of this year has locked up hundreds of artists and we all need to work tirelessly for their release. But equally, I also want to dedicate it to all those film makers in hiding in Afghanistan. Waiting under the most difficult and dangerous conditions, to find a way out of a place that just became hell for them after 20 years of relative freedom of thought and expression.”
Previous recipients of the award include Bruno Ganz, Peter Weir, Alan Rickman, Helmut Berger, Richard Lester, Peter Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Charles Aznavour, Bille August, Arnaud Desplechin, Carlos Saura, Emir Kusturica, Daniel Olbrychski, Geraldine Chaplin, Otar Ioseliani, Wim Wenders, Olivier Assayas, Catherine Denueve, Roman Polanski, , Jean- Jacques Annaud, Krzystof Zanussi, Kim Novak, Agnieszka Holland, Carmen Maura, Marco Bellochio, Peter Morgan, Giancarlo Giannini, Jerzy Stuhr, Jeremy Thomas, Sandrine Bonnaire, Leos Carax, and Mike Leigh.
In 2000 Downey was founder, with producing partner Samantha Taylor, of Film and Music Entertainment (F&ME) after careers both in publishing and theatre. He has production credits on around 100 feature films, the lion’s share of which are multi-party European co-productions with partners the length and breadth of Europe.
In 2016, Downey founded Film and Music Entertainment (IRE) to work in parallel with the UK entity. Its latest production Charlatan, by Agnieszka Holland, was shortlisted for this year’s US Academy Awards.
His work as a filmmaker has seen projects developed with novelists James Ellroy, the late Günter Grass, and Thomas (Schindler’s List) Keneally; IDA writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Vice Group founder and CEO Shane Smith, as well as directors such as Volker Schlöndorff, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Lech Majewski, Peter Greenaway, Julien Temple, Paweł Pawlikowski, Andrzej Jakimowski, Rajko Grlić, Srđan Karanović, Juraj Jakubisko, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, and Stephen Daldry.
Last year, Downey was part of the team that launched the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) at the Venice Film Festival. The ICFR aims to activate the film community’s collective response to filmmakers who face political persecution for their work. Downey is a founder and board member, and the European Film Academy, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam are the founding partners of the ICFR, with activities that include advocacy, support, monitoring, and observation.
Downey is currently a member of the BAFTA Council having previously served two terms and in 2008 he was a member of the BAFTA Film Committee and an active member of the Asia Pacific Screen Academy. In September 2020 it was announced that Downey would be the Honorary President of the 2020/2021 jury for the revamped LUX Prize, renamed LUX – the European Audience Film Award by the European Parliament and the European Film Academy (also known as LUX Audience Award). Previous retrospectives of his career have taken place in Zagreb (2009), Prague (2015) and Fort Lauderdale (2014).
