Touching on issues such as the independence of film journalism on the one hand and the ‘politics of critics’ on the other, the panel will be a platform for collective thinking about independent film criticism in a framework where festivals, studios and distributors on the one hand and critics on the other become more and more interdependent. It will also consider how emerging talent depends on being written about and how festivals take it as a mission to try to facilitate this in times when most outlets no longer have budgets to reimburse critics for their travels. This is as much the case in bigger industries as it is in smaller ones. Moderated by Critics’ Choice curators Dana Linssen and Jan Pieter Ekker, with publicist Charles McDonald, int’l distribution consultant and former studio executive Christophe Mercier, film journalists Belinda van de Graaf (Trouw), Wendy Ide (Screen International, The Guardian) and programmer/critic Tara Judah (Watershed, Destistfilm).
