The Melbourne International Film Festival Critics Campus is an intensive, week-long program of panels, workshops and mentoring designed to provide emerging Australian screen critics with a unique platform to nurture their talents in a live festival setting. Following 11 highly successful editions, Critics Campus returns in 2025, taking place from Monday 11 to Friday 15 August as part of the festival’s 73rd edition.
Established in 2014, Critics Campus has proved an invaluable incubator of emerging talent across the past decade, discovering and developing new voices in Australian screen criticism. As the media landscape continues to change and evolve, Critics Campus has responded in turn, driven by the idea that informed screen criticism is vital to a healthy screen culture and industry. In developing new and underrepresented voices, Critics Campus builds on its commitment to refreshing and growing the country’s critical landscape, to redefining the ways our writers consider the culture, and to preparing participants for successful careers in screen criticism and the arts.
Since its first edition, the program has grown in reputation and global reach, attracting A-list international critics, programmers and guests, and establishing a name for itself as one of the most well-regarded young critic workshops in the world. In 2025, eight selected participants will once again:
- take part in mentoring sessions with eight leading Australian and international film critics
- join a range of panels, workshops and live-editing sessions with some of the best critics – both in person and online – from around the world
- have access to festival films, publicity materials, guests and networking opportunities at MIFF
- be invited to attend screenings, social functions, galas and other festival events.
Some of our past Critics Campus mentors have included Beatrice Loayza, K. Austin Collins, Guy Lodge, Alison Willmore, Jessica Kiang, Jonathan Romney, Phoebe Chen, Simran Hans, Eric Hynes, Kelli Weston, Michael Koresky, Annabel Brady-Brown, Violet Lucca, Ela Bittencourt, Jourdain Searles, Daniel Kasman, Jason Di Rosso, Philippa Hawker, Michael Sun, Keva York, Isabella Trimboli, Craig Matheson, Cher Tan, Adrian Martin and Jonathan Rosenbaum.
International guest speakers have included Justin Chang, Angelica Jade Bastién, Dennis Lim, Ashley Clark, Melissa Anderson, Devika Girish, Kelley Dong, Nick Pinkerton, Chloe Lizotte, Charlie Shackleton, Zia Anger, Shaad D’Souza, E. Alex Jung, Hunter Harris and many more.
Since participating in Critics Campus, our alumni have gone on to write for Film Comment, The Guardian, Hollywood Reporter, The Nation, The Saturday Paper, MUBI Notebook, Sight & Sound, the ABC and more – plus work as screenwriters, producers, culture critics and film programmers.
Applications close at 5pm on Monday 19 May 2025. To learn more, and to apply, visit miff.com.au/criticscampus
For more information click here
