The next GoCritic! workshop in partnership with the Animation Festival Network will take place at the Animateka International Animated Film Festival in Ljubljana from 27 November to 3 December, 2022. Four promising international film journalists and critics will work with tutor Tristan Priimägi on reviews, interviews, industry stories and essays focused on the animation scene. These articles will be published on Cineuropa and Zippy Frames.

GoCritic! Participants at Animateka 2023

Natália Azevedo Andrade

Natália Azevedo Andrade is a writer, director and producer based in Porto, Portugal. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Porto and Animation at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design - where she graduated with the film Thorns and Fishbones and the master thesis "Space in Animation - The Kon Way”, which she presented at the Ink and Motion Conference. Recently, she has attended the Animation Sans Frontières European Animation Development Lab. She participated in the Curtas Vila do Conde Film Criticism workshop, publishing a few reviews in the national newspaper Público, and wrote for the MOME publication Design Is So. She is also on the presiding body of Casa da Animação, and occasionally works as a guest animation lecturer and programmer.

Oleksandra Kalinichenko

Oleksandra Kalinichenko is a Ukrainian film writer and member of the Union of Film Critics of Ukraine. She currently pursues a degree in Film Studies at the Karpenko-Kary National University of Theatre, Film and Television in Kyiv, particularly exploring contemporary Ukrainian cinema and cognitive film theory. Since 2021, she has been working for the Takflix online cinema of Ukrainian films as the website manager. She also works as a freelance film writer and participates in Ukrainian and international projects for film journalists, particularly by European Festival Network MIOB and Sarajevo Talents 2023. In 2023 she has been in student jury of International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Docudays UA and currently is in the pre-selection Docudays UA festival committee.

Lovro Smrekar

Lovro Smrekar is a Slovenian cineaste from Ljubljana. He is currently working as a journalist for the Slovenian TV channel POP TV, whilst also studying journalism at the University of Ljubljana. In the past he attended several critical writing workshops at film festivals and he also contributed to the Slovenian film magazine Ekran. He is also the author of a published mini comic book album for the Slovenian publisher Stripburger.

Adham Youssef

Adham Youssef is a film researcher and critic with deep interest in Middle East and African cinema. He is a contributing critic with The Film Verdict, and other international publications such as The Africa Report and The Guardian. He regularly collaborates with Egypt-based film festivals including The Luxor African Film Festival and the Ismailia Documentary Film Festival, as well as the The Cairo International Film Festival where he has been working as a catalogue editor since 2017. He worked with the Durban International Film Festival as a new projects selection member, and participated in Rotterdam International Film Festival's Young Critics Workshop in 2017, Durban Talents in 2020, and the Cairo Critics Week Workshop in 2016. He is also a freelance investigative journalist specialising in human rights in Egypt. He is currently doing his masters at the Free University Berlin, researching representations of prisons and incarceration in Egyptian popular cinema.