Rome Film Fest Honors ‘Chariots of Fire,’ ‘Killing Fields’ Producer David Puttnam

The Rome Film Fest will honor British producer David Puttnam with its inaugural Industry lifetime achievement award at the opening ceremony of the festival’s 20th edition, running October 15–26.

The award, created this year to recognize leading figures in the global film industry, will be presented to Puttnam by producer, director, and screenwriter Uberto Pasolini, who began his career with Puttnam as a location scout on The Killing Fields.

A true producing legend, Puttnam’s long list of credits includes 4 Oscar best picture nominees: Midnight Express, Chariots of Fire (that year’s winner), The Killing Fields, and The Mission. His work has earned a combined total of ten Academy Awards, ten Golden Globes, twenty-five BAFTAs, and nine Emmys, as well as one Palme d’Or (for Roland Joffé’s The Mission).

Born in London in 1941, Puttnam began producing films in the early 1970s with titles such as Melody (1971), The Pied Piper (1972), and That’ll Be the Day (1973). He set up Enigma Productions in 1978 and went on to collaborate with directors including Alan Parker (Bugsy Malone), Ken Russell (Mahler), Adrian Lyne (Foxes) and Ridley Scott (The Duelist), kick-starting a new wave of British filmmakers that would hold sway over Hollywood in the 1980s.

Puttnam was briefly a studio head, running Columbia Pictures from 1986 to 1987, where he favored low-budget films from up-and-coming auteurs —like Spike Lee’s School Daze over obvious blockbusters. Returning to the U.K., he continued to produce independent features, with such movies as Michael Caton-Jones’ Memphis Belle (1990) and István Szabó’s Meeting Venus (1991).

In the late 90s, Puttnam shifted his focus to politics and was elected to the House of Lords in 1997. He retired from Parliament in 2021 but remains active in education through Atticus Education, which provides audiovisual seminars worldwide.

Puttnam has held leadership roles with the Film Distributors’ Association and the National Film and Television School, and has been honored by BAFTA, the British Film Institute and the Royal Television Society. He also serves as UNICEF UK ambassador, WWF global ambassador, and is an associate professor at University College Cork.