The European Film Academy (EFA) has unveiled 462 film professionals as new members in an announcement timed to coincide with Europe Day on May 9.
The new arrivals will be eligible to vote in the academy’s European Film Awards, the region’s equivalent to the Academy Awards, as well as contribute to its other initiatives across the year.
The EFA said a record number of professionals had accepted to join the organization this year, adding that 50% were female, 49%, were male, and 1% defined as non-binary.
The bigger intake comes amid a drive to revamp the academy which recently announced it would be moving the EFA ceremony to January in 2026, from its traditional December slot, to make it more relevant in the annual film awards season culminating with the Oscars.
The EFA currently now counts 4,600 members based in 52 countries.
The new members mainly hailed from Germany (68), France (38), Switzerland (37), Poland (36), Italy (33), Spain (24), UK (28) and Ukraine (26), the Netherlands (19), Sweden (13), Serbia (11), Austria (10), Norway (9), Bulgaria, Finland, Iceland, Turkey (all 8), Belgium and Denmark (both 7).
The new members included eight Romani filmmakers, hailing from the Roma populations in Hungary, the UK, Germany, Austria, Kosovo and Sweden.
The EFA also noted that a fifth of the new intake was under 36 years old.
“This strengthens the representation of a younger yet notable generation of European filmmakers within the European Film Academy,” it said in a statement.
The body said that an increasing number of members representing the arts and crafts of cinema have been invited and that this was a trend it wanted to continue into the future.
“In the upcoming years, the European Film Academy is keen to further increase the number of members working as editors, production designers, sound designers, composers, hair and make-up artists or costume designers,” it said.
The new members include Kurdwin Ayub (Austria), Marie Kreutzer (Austria), Sebastian Meise (Austria), Aliaksei Paluyan (Belarus), Michiel Dhont (Belgium), Diana Cam Van Nguyen (Czech Republic), Vicki Berlin (Denmark), Elliot Crosset Hove (Denmark), Laura Birn (Finland), Sherwan Haji (Finland), Karim Aïnouz (Germany), Christopher Aoun (Germany), Charly Hübner (Germany), Meltem Kaplan (Germany), Paulina Lorenz (Germany), Abdullah Emre Öztürk (Germany), Christiane Paul (Germany), Frank Petzold (Germany), Philipp Scheffner (Germany), Faraz Shariat (Germany), Ina Weisse (Germany), Pipaluk Kreutzmann Jørgensen (Greenland), Katalin Bársony (Hungary), Hera Hilmar (Iceland), Valdimar Jóhansson (Iceland), Willem Dafoe (Italy), Laura Samani (Italy), Signe Baumane (Latvia), Stephanie Stremler (Luxembourg), Jerzy Skolimowski (Poland), Aleksandra Terpińska (Poland), André Santos (Portugal), Marco Leão (Portugal), Adam Davenport (Serbia), Jasna Đuričić (Serbia), Erdal Murat Aktaş (Spain), Séverine Cornamusaz (Switzerland), Louis Hothothot (Netherlands), Dana Nechushtan (Netherlands), Walter Stokman (Netherlands), Kutluğ Ataman (Turkey), Anastasia Karpenko (Ukraine) Christina Tynkevych (Ukraine), Mia Bays (UK).
The EFA was originally founded in the 1990s with the aim of strengthening European cinema, with original members including Ingmar Bergman, Pedro Almodóvar, Liliana Cavani, Isabelle Huppert, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Liv Ullmann and Wim Wenders.