The fifth in the series of workshops organised in partnership with the Animation Festival Network takes place at Fest Anča International Animation Festival and its Student Forum in Žilina, Slovakia, from 27 June - 2 July, 2023. Five promising international film journalists and critics work with tutor Neil Young on reviews, interviews, industry stories and essays focused on the animation scene. These articles are published on the Cineuropa and Zippy Frames websites.

GoCritic! Participants at Fest Anča International Animation Festival 2023

Antonio Maria Abate

Antonio Maria Abate is an Italian film and video game critic and filmmaker. He served as the editor and community manager for GTA-Series.com, the most popular YouTube channel dedicated to Grand Theft Auto series, editor and critic for Italian video game blogs Gamesblog and Inside the Game, and editor and critic for the film blog Blogo-Triboo. In 2013, he acquired a Filmmaking Certificate Diploma from the London Film Academy and is making short animated and fiction films.

Pelin Çılgın

Pelin Çılgın is a Turkish film critic, programmer and an MA student in Film and Television studies at Istanbul Bilgi University. Their debut film “natür & mort” has been selected for several international film festivals and one national art exhibition. Writing film criticism since 2020, they also program and curate films for Norway-based Fra Øst til Nord and Turkey-based Fil’m Hafızası. They are on selection committee for 2023 Norwich Film Festival and the 2022/2023 New Orleans Film Festival. Their first peer-reviewed academic article, titled "Examining the Female Immigrant and Minority Representation in Shunji Iwai’s Swallowtail Butterfly", has been published at REFLEKTIF Journal of Social Sciences in January 2023. After the GoCritic! workshop in Žilina, they will take part in the 2023 Sarajevo Film Festival's Talents Press section. 

Michaela Režova

Michaela Režova is a Czech filmmaker, art director, animation lecturer and artistic researcher. She is focused on genre of animated documentary and its forms. Currently she is a PhD candidate at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. In 2021 she prepared film exhibition dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the animation studio at UMPRUM (Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design) in Prague, the oldest such studio in the Czech Republic and currently she is finalising the editing of a book on the same topic. She stands behind the platform f-a-t.cz which works under the motto "From animators to animators" and brings content from animation world, mainly podcasts.

Anastasiya Stoeva

Anastasiya Stoeva is an editor, critic and author, writing about cinema, art and culture. She writes for Bulgarian outlets Programata and Go Guide, as well as for several other magazines. She has been freelancing as an animator and has directed several short commercials, music videos and a short live action film. She is also an aspiring poet and her works were recently published in the Scottish literature magazine Interpret. She served as production designer on the animated short Spiritus Mundi: Animating the World for ASIFA's initiative celebrating Bulgarian culture and ASIFA's 60th anniversary. It has been selected for several festivals and won a number of awards.

Nikola Wrzołek

Nikola Wrzołek is a dedicated writer and cinephile with a special interest in societal issues. After falling in love with cinema thanks to screenings in the School Film Club, she started writing about films. She has been reviewing European films from Polish distributors and writing articles and news reports related to the film industry for a Polish website. A graduate of Dalarna University in Sweden, she holds an MA in English with a specialisation in literature.