European Film Academy

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.

[citation needed] In 1996, Wenders took over the presidency from Bergman,[3] and the British producer Nik Powell was elected chairman.

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.

The European Film Academy is active and has members in 52 countries, including those in geographical Europe as well as Israel and Palestine.

The program includes conferences, seminars, and workshops, with a common goal is to build a bridge between creativity and the industry.

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.

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).