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Panel of European Film Critics

Reini BradatschREINHARD BRADATSCH

(Austria)

Bradatsch is a freelance reviewer of the Austrian film magazine Ray, board member of the Austrian Film Critics’ Guild (an official Austrian representation of the FIPRESCI), and editor-in-chief of its website (www.afcg.at). He is a co-founder and co-editor of the online magazine allesfilm.com. He regularly writes reports from national and international film festivals, e.g. Viennale (Vienna/AT), Crossing Europe (Linz/AT), IFF Bratislava (SK) and was a FIPRESCI juror at international festivals in Cottbus and Bratislava. He was a programmer of the section on Austrian documentaries at the 3rd IFF Cinematik in Pieštany in 2008.

 

Gregory Cavinato_2016GRÉGORY CAVINATO

(Belgium)

Grégory Cavinato graduated from the University of Brussels’ ELICIT section (Screenwiting and Philosophy) in 2004 and has since worked as a screenwriter and freelance film critic for various Belgian newspapers and websites, most notably for Cinergie.be (2005 – 2011), Cineuropa, Cinemafantastique.net, C.E.C. and Le Film Belge. Since 2012, Gregory works as an editor-in-chief of Action-Cut.com, a film website dedicated to overlooked or forgotten masterpieces. As a film critic, Grégory is a member of the FIPRESCI and the U.P.C.B. (Union of the Belgian Film Critics). His first screenplay, a French-Belgian co-production called Fish Boy is currently in pre-production. It will be directed by Laurent Michelet and will be released in 2018.

 

Florentina_CiuvercaFLORENTINA CIUVERCA

(Romania)

A film journalist, founder and editor of Filmreporter.ro, the first online Romanian film magazine to be awarded by the Romanian Film Critics Association. In 2013, she received the Alex. Leo Serban Scholarship during the film festival Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema in New York. Between 2006 and 2010, she was a cultural reporter and editor for Evenimentul zilei, one of the biggest newspapers in Romania. As a special correspondent at Cannes Film Festival, Venice, Berlinale, Rome, TIFF, DokuFest (Kosovo), she wrote reports for several magazines. In 2011, she was a member of Gopo jury, the Romanian film industry awards. Since 2010, she also works as a communication specialist for renowned film festivals (Transilvania International Film Festival, NexT Film Festival or Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest).

 

Roberto DonatiROBERTO DONATI

(Italy)

Donati graduated in Modern Literature and Film Studies from the University of Siena in Italy, and also studied at the University of Warwick in the UK. As a professional journalist, he writes for newspapers, journals, and magazines on culture, film and literary topics. As a writer, he is preparing screenplays and documentary projects for comics, television and cinema. Donati’s main publication is a book on the theme of nostalgia in the films of Sergio Leone (Sergio Leone. L’America, la nostalgia e il mito, Falsopiano 2009), and he is currently a curator of a film book series for Bietti (Bietti Heterotopia). Since 2007, he teaches Film Studies, Italian Literature and History at several Italian lyceums.

 

Carmen GrayCARMEN GRAY

(Germany)

Carmen Gray was born in New Zealand and now lives in Berlin. She is a film critic and journalist for publications including The Guardian, Sight & Sound, Screen, The Calvert Journal and Sirp (Estonia), and is the former Film Editor of Dazed & Confused magazine. She is on the selection committee for Berlin Critics’ Week.

 

Philip IlsonPHILIP ILSON

(United Kingdom)

Philip Ilson is a director of the London Short Film Festival, which he co-founded in 2004. He is also a short film programmer for the BFI London Film Festival, and works as a freelance programmer at the East End Film Festival, London, Cork Film Festival, Ireland, and the Branchage Festival, Jersey, Latitude music festival, and at Curzon Soho Cinema.

 

Milja MikkolaMILJA MIKKOLA

(Finland)

In early 2000s Mikkola worked in London’s West End cinemas, belonging to the disappearing species of the old-school film projectionist. She has a degree in Film Theory from Brunel University (UK) as well as postgraduate studies in Visual Journalism at Tampere University (Finland). Since 2005 she has been a part of the legendary Midnight Sun Film Festival where she currently holds the post of a programme manager. She is also the co-founder of Helsinki’s very own Viva Erotica Film Festival that celebrates the history of sex on celluloid.

 

Mike NaafsMIKE NAAFS

(Netherlands)

Mike Naafs studied film at the University of Amsterdam, where he was also an editor-in-chief of the student film magazine. After graduating, he worked for a number of film festival newspapers and magazines, including The Dutch Filmkrant, and visited festivals for FIPRESCI in Kiev, Cannes, Moscow, Cluj-Napoca and St Petersburg. He is currently freelancing and working as a chef in a psychiatric institution.

 

Vuk_Perovic maleVUK PEROVIĆ

(Montenegro)

Perović is an editor of film and series programme on Radio and Television of Montenegro. He is an art director and member of the team that established UnderhillFest, an international film festival of feature-length documentaries in Podgorica, Montenegro. He has been publishing film reviews and interviews with people working in the film industry. He was a deputy editor-in-chief and also editor of the culture column in the daily newspaper Dnevne novine (Podgorica, Montenegro). He has been writing about film for over ten years. During this period, he has written for the Pobjeda, the longest running and most traditional newspaper in Montenegro. For seven years, he has been editing and hosting a TV show about film and culture on TV Atlas (Podgorica, Montenegro). He is a member of Montenegro’s FIPRESCI section.

 

Pamela Pianezza 2012PAMELA PIANEZZA

(France)

Pianezza is a photographer, journalist and film critic who collaborates with Dazed & Confused, Arte, Libération, Canal +. She is a founder of Tess Magazine, a cultural review on the web. As a programmer, she selects films for Cannes Critics’ Week and the REC festival in Tarragona, Spain. She is a specialist in Scandinavian and Eastern cinema and teaches Film Criticism at the University of Tallinn – Baltic Film School. She is currently working on a photo documentary on independent European cinema.

 

Tristan PriimaagiTRISTAN PRIIMÄGI

(Estonia)

Priimägi studied Semiotics at Tartu University and graduated in 2001, specializing in Film Semiotics. He has been a regular contributor to all the bigger press publications, newspapers and magazines in Estonia, writing about film, music and pop-culture in general. He has helped with the translations and promotion work for Estonian films and film events. Since January 2010, he organizes the DocPoint Tallinn documentary film festival (an Estonian branch of the renowned Helsinki documentary festival DocPoint). He works as a film editor in the cultural weekly newspaper Sirp.

 

Xavier Garcia PuertoXAVI GARCIA PUERTO

(Spain)

Graduate in History and Audiovisual Communication. He has worked in historical research, as a documentary scriptwriter and university professor. Film and video curator, he has organized exhibitions and programs in Brazil, Israel, Russia, US or China and collaborated with institutions such as KunstWerke (Berlin), Caixaforum, Instituto Cervantes or the Cineteca Nacional de México. Jury member in festivals in South Africa, Hungary, Italy, France or Siberia including the Berlinale (Generation). Since 2011 he is programmer at Tallin Black Nights FF, as a delegate for Spanish speaking countries and editor of Debut competition. During 2014-2015 he was the main curator of the project Off the Wall, which brought Central & Eastern European films on tour in over twenty cities in seven countries in Europe and America. Cofounder of REC International Film Festival of Tarragona in 2001 and its artistic director since 2006.

 

Daniel RafaelicDANIEL RAFAELIĆ

(Croatia)

Rafaelić graduated in History from the Zagreb University in 2002. He is currently a PhD. student. Between 2002 and 2010 he worked as a film historian in the Croatian Cinematheque. From 2007 until 2009 he was the Head of Film Preservation and Restoration Department. He has been publishing his papers in various film journals. In 2005, he wrote and directed the documentary The Other Side of Welles about the life, work, and intellectual heritage Orson Welles left behind in Croatia. Since 2010, he has been giving lectures at the History Department, Department of Archaeology and Psychology at the Faculty of Arts, Zagreb University. In 2013, he published Kinematografija u NDH, a book about film production in Croatia during WWII. The book immediately became a bestseller.

 

Matej SvobodaMATEJ SVOBODA

(Czech Republic)

Matej Svoboda comes from Liberec, Czech Republic. Although he studied Czech and English language at the Faculty of Pedagogy, he has never worked for the educational system. He currently lives in Prague and works as a movie publicist for MovieZone.cz and as an editor for TV magazines – TV Max and Týdeník Televize. He writes for Joy magazine and for TV Prima blog as well.

 

Swirek_2016_2KRZYSZTOF ŚWIREK

(Poland)

Krzysztof Świrek is a sociologist and film critic. Currently a PhD candidate in sociology at Warsaw University, where he also teaches history of social thought. Świrek has been writing reviews and essays for Kino monthly (since 2006) and online magazine dwutygodnik.com (biweekly.pl, since 2009), as well as other online and print titles. He occasionally comments on recent cinema and social issues in Polish radio and television.

 

Daniel VadockyDANIEL VADOCKÝ

(Slovakia)

Vadocký graduated in Philosophy from the University of Trnava and in Film Studies from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, where he later lectured on Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Department of Film Science and Multimedia. He has published articles on world cinema, film history and theory in various magazines and newspapers. He is a co-founder of the short film competitive section and the non-competitive feature film section Focus at the Art Film Fest IFF in Košice. Daniel worked as a programme coordinator of the Bratislava IFF and has recently been a member of international juries in Tallinn, Tokyo, Prague, Uppsala, Malmö and Budapest. He worked as a Head of Sales at The National Film Archive in Prague and currently we works as a Sales Agent for the production company Negativ.

 

Kata Varo 2013KATA ANNA VÁRÓ

(Hungary)

and also works as a journalist. She graduated as a teacher of the English Language and Literature from the University of Debrecen, then completed a course in Film and Media Studies at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. After graduation, she joined Filmkultúra, the oldest and most prestigious Hungarian magazine focusing on cinema. She has been a juror (including FIPRESCI juries) at various international film festivals. She is a programme advisor for the Titanic IFF in Budapest.