Mike Downey

Mike Downey founded the UK-based independent production house Film and Music Entertainment (F&ME) twenty years ago in 2000. He is currently Chairman of the European Film Academy. Educated at the Universities of Warwick, Paris III (Sorbonne-Nouvelle), where he was a Boursier du Gouvernement Francais (French Government Scholar) and Paris X (Nanterre) where he did his Master's degree and began his doctorate. He spent most of the eighties as a theatre director and producer in France, Germany, the former Yugoslavia and the U.K., and the nineties as the co-founder and publisher of the Moving Pictures International group of media publications. He established the prolific UK production house in 2000 as part of an IPO on the Frankfurt DAX and to date has production credits well over 90 feature films. In his relatively short career as a film producer he has worked with the likes of four times Academy award nominee Stephen Daldry, Peter Greenaway, Agnieszka Holland, Julien Temple, Pawel Pawlikowski, Andrzej Jakimowski, Juraj Jakubisko, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, and many other directors the length and breadth of Europe.His recent work as a film maker has seen projects developed with James Ellroy, the late Gunter Grass, Thomas (Schindler's List) Keneally and IDA writer Rebecca Lenckiewicz. He produced the last film of Iranian exiled director Mohsen Makhmalbaf , The President,which opened the Venice festival and went on to win prizes in Tokyo, Beirut, and Chicago as well as this year's Berlinale Official Selection entry La Boheme directed by Golden Bear winner Mark Dornford May. The Streetkids United documentary tetralogy about streetchildren around the globe as well as this year's Berlinale entries Charlatan by Agnieszka Holland as a special gala at the Berlinale Palast and Servants by Ivan Ostrochovsky in the new Encounters competition section for challenging avant garde material.Downey has just closed a sales deal with WIDE Management for DeDe, Mariam (Dinola) Khatchvani's debut feature, began distribution in 2018. The film is a Georgian/British/Croatian/Dutch coproduction with Vova Katcharava's 20 Steps, Igor Nola's MP Film Production and JaJa Film Productions. Developed at the Sundance Lab and Fabrique des Cinémas du Monde (Cannes), and supported by the Doha Film Institute and the Georgian National Film Centre.Antonio Saura's Latido have also just come on board to handle international sales for Rajko Grlic's eagerly awaited The Constitution, which just picked up the Grand Prix des Ameriques at the recent Montreal Film Festival.Just beginning its festival life is How To Sell a War by Rudolph Herzog. Written by up and coming Welsh screenwriter/playwright, Tim Price, the film is developed by Creative England and is a black comedy in the spirit of Thank You for Smoking and Wag the Dog. Also in the latter stages of completion are The Disciple directed by Koza helmer Ivan Ostrochovsky and written by Rebecca Lenckiewicz and Ostrochovsky and Konstantin Bojanov's My Eyes Are Yours (working title) which is a partnership with Urban Distribution, and India's Overdose. Just finishing its tour of the world is Helsinki Film's and F&ME's Tom of Finland by Dome Karukoski. Protagonist Pictures has come on board to handle worldwide sales on Dome Karukoski's biopic about the life of the iconic Finnish artist and human rights activist. Aleksi Bardy wrote the screenplay for the film which tells the life story of Touko Laaksonen, a Finnish man who would become known around the world by his nom de guerre "Tom Of Finland".Continuing his fruitful relationship with Poland, Mike has come on board Bodo Kox's award winning screenplay The Man With The Magic Box produced by Iza Igel at Alter Ego productions. The company currently in post production with regular Polish partners at ZaiR on Andrzej Jakimowski's new production Once Upon a Time in November, Downey having just closed a sales deal with WIDE Management on that film. Work is also underway on legendary director Lech Majewski's Brigitte Bardot The Wonderful and Andrzej Jakimowski's Goat Mountain. Downey is a former tutor on Sheffield University's Creative Writing for Film course, was Thomas Ewing Visiting Professor of Film at Ohio University, a member of the Board of Advisors in the film school of Oklahoma University and the co- founder and President of the Motovun IFF in Croatia. In 2014 he became the Artistic Board Director of the Pula Film Festival to complement his work on the Zagreb Film Festival artistic board and is a longtime board member of the Isango theatre Company in Khayelitsha Township, Cape Town. He has published several lengthy tomes about producing in Europe, notably The Film Finance Handbook published by the Media Business School in two volumes. He acts regularly as an expert for the European Union on MEDIA affairs as well as advising US AID on media related investment in the Balkans. His most recent film festival directorship as for three years the artistic director of the International Antalya Film festival in Turkey.Mike has been a board member of the European Film Academy for almost 20 years and is just completing his first year as Chairman alongside president Wim Wenders - the six previous years he was deputy chairman. In 2006 he was voted on to the Council of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and in 2008 he was elected to the BAFTA Film Committee. Mike is also a trustee of the White Ribbon Alliance, a major global organisation aimed at reducing levels of mortality in childbirth in the developing world. He has served on over 20 international juries at film festivals worldwide including the Sarajevo Film festival, Festival do Rio de Janeiro, Cottbus International Film Festival, Warsaw IFF, Istanbul FF, Montreal IFF, Motovun FF, Sofia IFF, Transylvania IFF, Krakow IFF, and Zagreb IFF where in 2009 a retrospective of his work at Film and Music Entertainment was held. In 2014 he was named Producer of the Decade at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, joining the two previous incumbents Ed Pressman and Robert Evans. A Tribute was also held to his work as a producer at the 2015 Prague Film Festival. Hide

Mike Downey's FILMOGRAPHY

as Actor (1)

Deathwatch [Sub: Eng]