We asked the participants in the eleventh edition of the Young Critics Workshop at Film Fest Gent three simple questions. Who are they? What is their favorite “cinephiliac” moment? And which three films are they most looking forward to at the festival? Below are their answers.
Follow the Young Critics’ exploits at Film Fest Gent from October 13 until 19!
Ana Đošev
As a 21-year-old musicology student and cinephile, “interdisciplinary” has been the keyword of my film criticism journey so far. Currently writing for the Serbian movie critic platform Filmoskopija, I do reviews and essays while also gaining hands-on experience at local film festivals. Believing that every creative outlet deserves a thoughtful approach, I don’t shy away from the campy and sometimes banal world of genre cinema, with a particular passion for horror films. My background in musical performance and theory fuels my writing, blending different artistic and cultural influences. For me, [film] criticism is all about bridging gaps between unthinkable opposites.
Cinephiliac Moment
The scene that made me gasp and think “Oh, so THIS is cinema” was the infamous Mardi Gras acid trip from Dennis Hopper’s counterculture masterpiece Easy Rider (1969). The ecstatic sunshine nightmare layers sound and imagery in such a way that it turned decadent hippies into pure symbolist poetry.
Top three anticipated FFG Films
- Chain Reactions (Alexandre O. Philippe, 2024)
- Tú me abrasas (Matías Piñeiro, 2024)
- Misericordia (Alain Guiradie, 2024)
Theo Du
I grew up in Hong Kong, and am now based in Amsterdam. I have a Master’s in Film Studies from the University of Amsterdam and was involved with the UvA Film Club. While my academic interest in film remains, the world of criticism seems much more suited for my ever-flowing stream of dedications and diatribes. Been cultivating a steady diet of experimental films, B-movies, and films people might otherwise call ‘boring’. To use a vegetal metaphor, my favourite kind of films are like bitter melons: unpleasant and off putting for some, sweet and delectable for me and my friends.
Cinephiliac Moment
There was an October period of my engagement with film, and there is the period after November (2004) by Hito Steyerl. After encountering her work at the Stedelijk Museum, I found myself not being able to stop thinking about her pop-aesthetic critical essay films. Scouring the internet for any possible copies of her films, I stumble on November, and since then I revisit it often. In its 25-minute runtime, Steyerl somehow goes through a myriad of concepts. Weaving discussions of representation, martial arts, heroines, and the inherent fiction of moving images; at the same time, eulogizing her childhood best friend Andrea Wolf who was executed by the Turkish government. My favourite moment comes at the very end, where Steyerl concludes with:
This fiction tells us only one truth. The truth is only in fiction did Andrea disappear into the sunset. The truth is only in fiction have I died for my ideas. The truth is only in fiction have the women become stronger than men. Only in fiction were German weapons not used against the Kurdish population. Not even in fiction are the heroes innocent. And only in fiction does the good ultimately prevail.
Getting into Steyerl’s work led me down into finding my other favourites in this realm of critical filmmaking in Harun Farocki and Staub/Huillet. This film represents what I have always been looking for in cinema: a personal tale with a strong critical attitude, a didactic that provides only questions and not answers.
Top three anticipated FFG Films
- Universal Language (Matthew Rankin, 2024)
- Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, 2024)
- Blood Tea and Red String (Christiane Cegavske, 2006)
Emily Jisoo Bowles
I’m a British-Korean writer, translator, and film programmer based in London. I’ve worked with Queer East Festival to curate short film programs, and I currently run a community cinema club called Jjambbong film, which is centred around participatory spectatorship and fansubbing lesser-seen Asian films. One day I hope to write truly transcendent film criticism.
Cinephiliac Moment
I think Park Chan-wook is a director who really knows how to audiovisually edge the audience. There’s a scene in The Handmaiden where two women are undoing each other’s corsets, and the sound of each button being unfastened, each knot being unravelled is amplified to intoxicating effect. The screen pulsates with tension, and I can almost feel the unbearably light sensation of fingers tracing my back. I think a lot about how cinema can create embodied affects that speak to all the senses by only using sight and sound, and this is an example that comes immediately to mind.
Top three anticipated FFG Films
I’m looking forward to the slow cinema of Trương Minh Quý’s Viet and Nam (2024) and Tsai Ming-Liang’s Abiding Nowhere (2024), perhaps a moment of respite amidst the frenetic festival energy. As a fan of essay films, I’m curious about Robin Vanbesien’s hold on to her (2024) (written deliberately in lowercase).
Matheus Felix Melchioretto
Brazilian (although, as Carlos Drummond de Andrade said, it’s not certain such a thing exists). Graduated in Anthropology (though not an anthropologist). Currently translating the works of Charles Péguy. At some point of his youth decided for cinema.
Cinephiliac Moment
The mistake at the end of City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)… when the flower girl, now able to see, and gloriously running her own shop—having just laughed at the little tramp who stares at her with loving eyes (“I’ve made a conquest”)—recognizes Chaplin by the touch of his hands… Then the movie ends… That the most beautiful—and most painful—of endings, in the most beautiful of movies, should bear such a glaring mistake in continuity (the flower, along with the hand holding it, changes positions between shots), is perhaps a great lesson, and not merely of cinema. That Chaplin should make, with this actress he’d had such a difficult relationship with, and who had, before, unsatisfied him to the point he briefly fired her, that he should make this scene, and that this scene, the center of the movie, should bear—gloriously—such a mistake, is undoubtedly a great lesson: of what?
Top three anticipated FFG Films
- Miséricorde (Alain Guiraudie, 2024)
- Tú me abrasas (Matías Pineiro, 2024): It is a pretty title…
- Cu Li Never Cries (Phạm Ngọc Lân, 2024): I know almost nothing about it.
Marina Zigneli
I’m a film critic currently in my third year of PhD studies, researching the work of Maria Plyta, the first female Greek director. Earlier this year, I was part of the European Workshop for Film Criticism and, since 2022, I’ve been a film selector for the Women Over 50 Film Festival. My writings, in both Greek and English, have been featured in various online and print publications.
Cinephiliac Moment
There’s this scene in Kogonada’s After Yang (2021), where Yang’s memory bank is visualized as a vast Milky Way, with each star being a fleeting recording of his everyday life. With the capacity to capture only a few seconds per day, Yang chooses to “store” those seemingly mundane details that often go unnoticed: the laundry waiting to be folded, the gentle rustling of leaves in the wind, the soft glow of sunlight streaming into a room, and the delicate play of shadows it creates. As a cinephile who loves to explore how films contemplate the theme of memory, the cosmos of Yang’s memory bank, paired with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score, stands as one of my all-time favorite portrayals and a poignant reminder to savor the moments we tend to overlook.
Top three anticipated FFG Films
- The Outrun (Nora Fingscheid, 2024)
- September Says (Ariane Labed, 2024)
- To a Land Unknown (Mahdi Fleifel, 2024)