With the 2023 Cannes Film Festival less than two weeks away, we’re delighted to exclusively announce the second edition of the “Unifrance Critics Lab,” an initiative designed to strengthen the ties between English-speaking film critics and French artists and the film industry. The program’s successful inaugural edition in 2022 gave the film industry and Cannes access to outstanding, up-and-coming freelance writers, all of whom were nominated by leading film critics.
The program provides a valuable opportunity for both established and up-and-coming US and UK film journalists to discover the new generation of emerging French talent and their exciting works, while better connecting with key French auteurs and industry players to broaden their professional opportunities. The cost of attending Cannes is often one of the highest-cited barriers to entry for many critics without a full-time position, and this often leaves out crucial, diverse voices from the conversation.
“The Cannes Film Festival is one of the most important film festivals in the world. After a successful first edition of the Critics Lab in 2022, we at Unifrance are very happy to invite three new emerging critics from the US and the UK to attend the Festival” says Daniela Elstner, Executive Director of Unifrance. “For young French cinema lovers, Cannes is a great playground. To us, it is also crucial to bring new and diverse points of view in the conversation on current French cinema. With this new edition of the Critics Lab, we are thrilled to have selected three brilliant new voices to attend Cannes and have them and their more established mentors engage with our cinema and our industry.”
Unifrance enlisted three key senior trade film critics attending Cannes this year to nominate and mentor freelance critics for the program. Senior Critics participating are The Hollywood Reporter’s Lovia Gyarkye, IndieWire’s Eric Kohn, and Screen International’s Fionnuala Halligan.
The 2023 Unifrance Critics Lab participants are:
Robert Daniels – Robert Daniels is a Chicago-based film critic with freelance bylines in the New York Times, in the Los Angeles Times, at RogerEbert.com, at IndieWire, at The Playlist, and the Criterion Collection. He has written widely about Black American pop culture and issues of representation, and serves as a programmer for the Chicago Critics Film Festival. He is nominated by Eric Kohn.
Khushi Jain – Khushi Jain is doing her second Masters in London, researching visual and cinematic receptions of Classical antiquity. With a festival itinerary spanning Ireland, the UK and Poland, she has written about film, here, there and everywhere, most recently at photogénie. She also reads. A lot. She is nominated by Fionnuala Halligan.
Kelli Weston – Kelli Weston is a film programmer and critic based in Brooklyn, who specializes in contemporary horror cinema and nonfiction, with a particular emphasis on the visual narratives of Black women filmmakers. Her writing has been published in Reverse Shot, Sight & Sound, Film Comment, The Current (Criterion), and The Guardian, among other publications. She is nominated by Lovia Gyarkye.
The Critics Lab participants will be provided press accreditation, housing, and travel to the 2023 Cannes Film festival in May. They will be writing some coverage for Unifrance as well as expand their own freelancing opportunities on the ground out of the festival. The program extends beyond Cannes, to engage these critics with French Cinema throughout the year, including Unifrance’s annual US Festival “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema” which happens every March at Film at Lincoln Center and invitations to other festivals are under discussion.
For complete Cannes 2023 coverage, subscribe to our daily newsletter.