Critics Academy returns this summer in Locarno. The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Indiewire, in partnership with Film Comment, named the finalists for the third annual Locarno Film Festival’s Critics Academy (August 10-16), a workshop for aspiring film critics that takes place during the festival. The program, which also has a component at New York Film Festival, is designed to nurture promising film critics and journalists as they attend and cover screenings and events at the festivals on both continents.
The 10 people taking part in this year's Locarno Critics Academy are: Mallory Andrew, Neil Bahadur, Michael Guarnieri, Leonie Krähenbühl, Tina Poglajen, Walter Rohrbach, Julian Ross, Andrei Sendrea, Pascaline Sordet, and Martina Viviani.
From more than 120 applications, six finalists were selected by editors at Indiewire and Film Comment for this year's program. Starting this year, the Critics Academy will also involve an additional four Swiss participants in conjunction with the Federal Office of Culture (FOC), the Association of Swiss Film Journalists and the website Cineman. Those participants were selected by the Swiss Alliance of Film Journalists, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), and the website Cineman.ch, which will work with the Swiss contingent on work published in their native languages.
Again this year, Critics Academy will work under the editorial guidance of Indiewire Senior Editor Eric Kohn and Eugene Hernandez, Deputy Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Participants will cover the festival with reviews of Locarno Film Festival selections as well as articles on sidebar events, in-depth reflections on various program sections, and interviews with the festival’s filmmakers and guests. Their work will be published in Indiewire, its Criticwire blog, and the festival’s Pardo Live publication in addition to Film Comment's website. Each day, the workshop will feature candid roundtable discussions with veteran working critics and other members of the industry working at the festival.
Critics Academy began two years ago at the Locarno Film Festival and was followed by a select group at the New York Film Festival. The program will take place during the New York Film Festival again this September and October.
