Michael Downey is a multifaceted creative professional with a diverse range of expertise, encompassing cinematography, production, and direction. His geographical scope is vast, as he is based in both the United States and Istanbul, allowing him to work on a broad spectrum of projects.
Downey's most recent work has been focused on conflict coverage, with his most notable project being the Russian invasion of Ukraine for The New York Times. The staff coverage he contributed to received a Pulitzer Prize for international news coverage of the invasion of Ukraine. Furthermore, he collaborated with Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Karim Amer and Mike Learner as the director of photography on their upcoming feature documentary, 'Defiant', which explores the war in Ukraine and was selected for the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.
Downey's career in documentary filmmaking began in 2015 when he worked as a segment director of photography on Eva Orner's Academy Award-winning film 'Chasing Asylum', which was set in Lebanon. The film received an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award for Best Feature Length Documentary.
In 2022, Downey received the Documentary Award of Excellence from Picture of the Year International for his short documentary on the dying bird language in northern Turkey. He also worked as the director of photography on a six-part series titled 'Lift the Ice', which was filmed across five continents and released in 2023. Additionally, he collaborated with Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker Rita Baghdadi as an additional cinematographer on her coming-of-age documentary 'Sirens', which has been picked up by Sundance.
Earlier in his career, Downey worked on his first series with renowned chef Nigel Slater OBE as the director of photography for BBC2. Prior to this, he covered major political events in the Middle East and North Africa region, including the civil wars in Libya and Syria, the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon, the 2011 Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, and the conflict in Iraq.
