GoCritic! Animest 2025
The last GoCritic! workshop of the 2024–2025 cycle in partnership with the Animation Festival Network will take place at the Animest, the Bucharest International Animation Film Festival in Romania from 3–12 October 2025. Three promising international film journalists and critics will work with tutor Pamela Cohn 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 Animest 2025
Sergiu Inizian
Sergiu Inizian is a Romanian journalist, film critic and essayist. As a student, he covered two of Romania’s most popular film festivals: the Transilvania International Film Festival and Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest. He participated in the 2023 FIPRESCI Warsaw Critics Project and frequently collaborates with Eye for Film, a UK-based publication, where he covered the 2024 Berlinale. He has participated in two GoCritic! workshops at Fest Anča and Animest Bucharest, served on the People’s Jury at the Five Flavours Asian Film Festival and is an alumnus of Talents Sarajevo.
Botagoz Koilybayeva
Botagoz Koilybayeva is a Kazakh-born, Prague-based film writer, PhD student and alumna of Berlinale Talents Press and Locarno Critics Academy. She writes about cinema in academic and cultural as well as English-language and Central Asian contexts. She has contributed to Little White Lies, Klassiki, Senses of Cinema and Modern Times Review. Her bylines in Russian include the art journal Art of Her, ’98mag and Manshuq. Her current PhD research centres on the intersection of film, ecology and the more-than-human.
Andy Stoeva
Andy Stoeva is a film critic, poet and graphic designer who graduated in animation at New Bulgarian University. Writes short stories, articles, film reviews, script and poems, some of which have been published on various platforms, including Interpret, Cineuropa, Zippy Frames, L’Europeao, Kino and others. Attended the GoCritic! workshop at Fest Anča in Žilina, Slovakia, MIOB - Lab of Cultural, Creative and Festival Journalism at the European Film Forum Scanorama in Vilnius, Talent Press at Talents Sarajevo and the FIPRESCI Critics Project at the 40th Warsaw FIlm Festival. Andy’s first poetry book, “Uncommitted Crimes”, was published earlier this year and has been presented with the Damyan Damyanov national award for best debut.
