Mike Downey

Early years

Downey was born in Devon, England, the son of Brigid Downey (née Flood) and Thomas Downey, who were economic migrants from Kildare, Ireland. The family moved to Taunton, Somerset, where he attended the St George's Roman Catholic School and Huish's Grammar School aka Richard Huish College.

Education and career

After gaining a BA degree in French with Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick, Downey went on to continue post-graduate studies at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle (as a Boursier du Gouvernement Francais/French Government Scholar), and Paris X Nanterre. While working towards his MA and then PhD, he taught at the Lycée Charlemagne and at the theatre school at the Théâtre des Amandiers, under Patrice Chereau.

The 1980s saw Downey working as a theatre director France, Germany, the former Yugoslavia and the U.K. in theatres as varied an eclectic as The Gate (London), Bac To Bac Theatre (Exeter), Atelje 212 (Belgrade), Studiotheater and Theater Rechts der Isar (Munich) and the UK's National Student Theatre Company.

In 1986 and 1987, Downey curated a number of film programmes at the National Film Theatre. Among the most significant were the three major seasons he programmed of Yugoslav Cinema. In 1986, he also published his first book, The Self Managing Screen, written by Downey to coincide with a major retrospective of television fiction at the British Film Institute that he curated at the National Film Theatre on the subject of television fiction during the time of the Socialist Federal Republic of Jugoslavija.

In 1990, he co-founded Moving Pictures International magazine in London and it rapidly became one of the key international trade papers serving the global film industry, alongside Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Screen International.

A decade later, in 2000, Downey joined forces with fellow producer Sam Taylor, to create the UK-based independent production house Film and Music Entertainment (F&ME) as part of a public offering on the Frankfurt Neuer Markt. As of 2020, F&ME is based in Dublin, Ireland.

His work as a film maker has seen projects developed with novelists James Ellroy, the late Gunter Grass, and Thomas Keneally (Schindler's List); IDA writer Rebecca Lenckiewicz, VICE Group founder and CEO Shane Smith, as well as directors such as Volker Schloendorff, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Julien Temple; and writers of the ilk of Lee Hall, Colm Tóibín,} and David Grossman.

In his career as a film producer he has worked with a wide range of directors, including Peter Greenaway, Agnieszka Holland, Paweł Pawlikowski, Andrzej Jakimowski, Rajko Grlić, Srđan Karanovićc, Juraj Jakubisko, Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, and Stephen Daldry, as well as a multitude of other helmers the length and breadth of Europe, South America, Africa and India.

In 2002, he wrote and edited The Film Finance Handbook, published by Wallflower Press, which acts as a guide for anyone planning to set out as a producer of films.

In 2004, Downey joined the European Film Academy Board and was elected deputy chairman in 2014, and was also elected as EFA chairman in 2020.

He has served two terms as a BAFTA Council member and in 2008 he was a member of the BAFTA Film Committee. Downey rejoined the BAFTA Council in 2020.

Downey is founder and President of the Motovun Film Festival in Croatia, artistic advisor to the Zagreb Film Festival, artistic director to the Antalya Film Festival and former artistic board member of the Pula Film Festival.

He has been a trustee of the White Ribbon Alliance since 2010, and as of 2017 was on the International board of trustees of The Isango Ensemble, a South African theatre company.

A member of the Asia Pacific Screen Academy (APSA) since 2017, Downey was as a former APSA Cultural Diversity Award winner a jury member at the 2019 APSA's.

Serving on more than 20 international juries at film festivals worldwide, including the Sarajevo Film Festival, Festival do Rio de Janeiro, Cottbus International Film Festival, Warsaw International Film Festival, Istanbul Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, Motovun Film Festival, Sofia International Film Festival, Transylvania International Film Festival, Krakow Film Festival, Cartagena International Film Festival (FICCI) and Zagreb Film Festival.

Downey is also an alumnus of The Sundance Institute, and quondam Thomas Ewing Professor of Film at Ohio University.