Producer Ada Solomon, recognised for a career of more than 25 years in film, has been elected board chair of the European Film Academy following votes cast by more than 5,400 members.

According to a press release sent to AGERPRES on Thursday, with Ada Solomon's appointment Romania is now represented at the highest level of European cinema.

Dutch producer Leontine Petit and French producer Matthieu Darras were elected deputy chairs. Their two-year term will begin on 1 January 2026.

Ada Solomon has served for six years as deputy chair, working alongside the outgoing board chair, Mike Downey, and had previously been a full board member. She has been a member of the European Film Academy since 2011 and is the first Romanian woman to hold a position on its board.

'As a member of the Board of the European Film Academy for ten years I have taken on the responsibility of promoting excellence in filmmaking in the full diversity of European cinematic voices, as well as shining a spotlight on smaller territories and under-represented forms of cinema that are less visible. It is a time of change and I am ready to embrace the challenge, knowing I am supported by the Academy's outstanding executive team and the wonderful people on the Board of the European Film Academy, especially the newly elected deputy chairs Leontine Petit and Matthieu Darras,' Ada Solomon is quoted in the release as saying.

Her remarkable contribution to Romanian and international cinema includes nearly one hundred fiction and documentary films, both feature-length and short, acclaimed at international festivals and distributed in more than fifty territories worldwide, the release reads.

Ada Solomon, the first producer to bring Romania both the Golden Bear and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, has worked with numerous directors including Cristian Nemescu, Calin Peter Netzer, Radu Jude, Ivana Mladenovic, Alexandru Solomon, Razvan Radulescu, Tomasz Wasilewski, Hana Jusic and Drago Sholev. She has also supported the debuts of directors such as Marta Bergman, Olga Lucovnicova, Emilie Blichfeldt, Chiara Malta, Federico Bondi, Adriano Valerio, Anamaria Comanescu and Paul Negoescu.

In 2025, 'Sorella di Clausura' film, directed by Ivana Mladenovic and produced by Ada Solomon through microFILM company, was successfully presented at major international festivals including Locarno, where it won the Independent Critics' Award for Best Performance, Sarajevo, where it received the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Director, Gijón, where it received a Special Mention from the Jury, and the Author Film Festival in Belgrade, where it won the Best Film category.

Among the most notable titles she has contributed to are 'The New Year That Never Came' (Bogdan Muresanu, Best Film in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival and EFA Discovery 2024 nomination), 'Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World' (Radu Jude, 2023, Special Jury Prize at Locarno), 'Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn' (Radu Jude, 2021, Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival), 'Child's Pose' (Calin Netzer, 2013, Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival) and 'Toni Erdmann' (Maren Ade, 2016, Best European Film at the European Film Awards and Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film).

Among the successful international projects to which she contributed as line producer are 'Callas Forever' (Franco Zeffirelli), the children's films 'Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn' (Hermine Huntgeburth) and the German box-office hit 'The Three Investigators and The Legacy of the Dragon' (Tim Dunschede).

The European Film Academy was founded in 1989 under the name European Cinema Society by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman together with forty other filmmakers from across Europe, including Bernardo Bertolucci, Federico Fellini, Claude Chabrol, Dušan Makavejev, István Szabó and Wim Wenders, with the aim of promoting the interests of the continent's film industry. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Petronius Craiu; EN - writing by: Adina Panaitescu)