European Film Academy

The European Film Academy is a group of European filmmakers who come together in Berlin on the occasion of the first presentation of the European Film Awards in November 1988.

Every year, the European Film Academy honors films and filmmakers with the European Film Awards. The ceremony takes place every even year in a different European city and every odd year in Berlin.

History
The European Film Academy, originally under the name European Cinema Society, was founded in 1989 by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and an additional 40 filmmakers from across Europe, including Bernardo Bertolucci, Claude Chabrol, Dušan Makavejev, István Szabó, and Wim Wenders. Bergman became the first president, and Wenders was elected chairman. A year later, the European Cinema Society was renamed European Film Academy and was registered as a non-profit association.

In 1996, Wenders took over the presidency from Bergman, and the British producer Nik Powell was elected chairman.

Polish veteran filmmaker Agnieszka Holland became the first female president of the European Film Academy in 2021, with Irish-British film producer Mike Downey elected chairman in 2020.

Since 2021, the European Film Academy refrains from the use of the abbreviation "EFA" and instead refers to itself using its full name or the short form "academy". It has reshaped its corporate identity by setting up a new digital infrastructure and by introducing a new logo in August 2021. The logo was designed by Polish design agency Huncwot.

French actress Juliette Binoche was elected president of the Academy in May 2024 after Holland stepped down.

Board
The board of the academy consists of members representing various parts of Europe. Board members are elected for a period of 2 years, with a maximum period of 3 periods. From 2024, each of the 15 organization's board members were selected from 15 distinct geographical or linguistic regions in Europe, each comprising different countries. In addition, a board seat has been set aside for a transnational ethnic representative from either the Sámi or Roma populations in Europe.

Board meetings take place 3 times a year, one of which is in Berlin, where the academy is headquartered.


 * President: Juliette Binoche (since 2024)
 * Chair of the board: Mike Downey (since 2020)
 * CEO and director: Matthijs Wouter Knol (since 2021)
 * Deputy chairs: Ada Solomon, Joanna Szymańska
 * Current members of the board: Bettina Brokemper, Başak Emre, Daniel Hočevar, Nina Hoss, Denis Ivanov, Giorgos Karnavas, Hanka Kastelicová, Tine Klint, Paz Lázaro Barquilla, Christophe Leparc, Leontine Petit, Marija Razgutė, Maria Nevina Satta, Jim Sheridan, Mira Staleva, Anne-Lajla Utsi.
 * Honorary members of the board: Sir Ben Kingsley, István Szabó
 * Former honorary members of the board: Dušan Makavejev, Jeanne Moreau

Members per country
Based on a decision of the general assembly, the number of members, limited initially to 99, has been allowed to expand. The academy invites new members once per year. As of 2024, membership has exceeded 5,000.

Listed are all countries with more than 20 European Film Academy members. The European Film Academy is active and has members in 52 countries, including those in geographical Europe as well as Israel and Palestine.

Funding
The European Film Academy is mainly funded by the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin (German National Lottery), the German State Minister for Culture and the Media, and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. The presentation of the European Film Awards is financed independently from the academy. Founded in 2006 to produce the European Film Awards ceremony for television, European Film Academy Productions (formerly EFA Productions) gGmbH is the in-house production team and is a subsidiary company of the European Film Academy e.V. The European Film Awards is supported by patrons from the international film industry.



Annual academy programme
Throughout the year, the European Film Academy initiates and participates in a series of activities dealing with film politics as well as economic, artistic, and training aspects. The program includes conferences, seminars, and workshops, with a common goal is to build a bridge between creativity and the industry. Some of the academy's events have become an institution for meetups within the European film community. Some of these events are:


 * The Short Film Initiative: An initiative by the European Film Academy in co-operation with fifteen festivals throughout Europe. At each of these festivals, an independent jury presents one of the European short films in competition with a nomination in the short film category of the European Film Awards.


 * A Sunday in the Country: A special weekend encounter between approximately 10 young European filmmakers and some established European Film Academy members. The private atmosphere of these gatherings guarantees an exchange of ideas and experience which goes far beyond the results of usual workshops.


 * Conferences and Seminars: A series of conferences initiated and/or supported by the European Film Academy to discuss what European film is, how it is changing, and where it is going.


 * Master Classes: These classes offer training opportunities for young talent, combining theoretical and practical training. The high-profile list of former masters includes film professionals such as Jean-Jacques Annaud, Jan De Bont, Henning Carlsen, André Delvaux, Bernd Eichinger, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Jiří Menzel, Tilda Swinton, István Szabó, Marc Weigert, Mike Newell, Tsui Hark, Allan Starski and Anthony Dod Mantle.

European Film Awards


The annual European Film Awards ceremony (known as FELIX until 1997) is the most high-profile activity of the European Film Academy. The academy pursues the following aims with the awards: attracting the interest of the audience in European cinema, promoting its cultural and artistic qualities, and regaining the public's confidence in its entertainment value. To put these ideas into practice, the People's Choice Award was added as a new category in 1997. As of 2020, the People's Choice Award merged with the Lux Award of the European Parliament into the joint initiative LUX Audience Award. The nominees for the LUX Audience Award are announced during the ceremony of the European Film Awards. After this, screenings of the nominated films are organised for the public in several European cities.

The members of the European Film Academy actively participate in the selection, nomination and awarding procedures for the European Film Awards.

Taking place in the second weekend of December, the European Film Awards are the first in the international awards season. Most of the nominees and winners of the European Film Awards are found in the following months among the nominees and winners of the Golden Globes or the Oscars. In the past years, European producers and distributors repeatedly stressed that a nomination for or win at the European Film Awards had a positive impact on the chances for their films to win further international awards, such as a Golden Globe or an Oscar.

Sidebar events
Throughout the year, the academy organizes a side program on the occasion of the European Film Awards. Originally, this was a weekend with panel discussions and conferences in the city where the Awards ceremony would take place. At these events, production methods for the new millennium were discussed at the conference (Berlin 1999), or European filmmakers of international reputation (among them, Wim Wenders, Liv Ullmann, Tom Tykwer, Dominik Moll, Pavel Lungin, Maria de Medeiros) as well as the then EU commissioner Viviane Reding made very personal and visionary speeches on the artistic, cultural, and social role of cinema in front of 800 guests at Theâtre de l'Odéon in Paris, where the conference "E LA NAVE VA - For a New Energy in European Cinema" was held (2000). Significant changes to the annual program were introduced in 2021.

Month of European Film
As of 2022, the European Film Academy organizes an annual "Month of European Film". This program highlights European films in the month prior to the European Film Awards, both in European cinemas, on television, as well as in cooperation with streaming platforms. A pilot edition of the Month of European Film took place in Berlin in 2021. The first official edition of the Month of European Film was launched in November 2022 at the Seville European Film Festival and took place simultaneously in a range of European cities.