BFI London Film Festival Critics Mentorship Programme
About this opportunity
The BFI London Film Festival Critics Mentorship Programme pairs emerging film critics with experienced mentors from leading media partners. Participants attend the festival as accredited press delegates, producing reviews, interviews, and features for publication. The programme is specifically designed to open doors for writers from backgrounds underrepresented in film criticism.
Application tips
Demonstrate a genuine passion for cinema and a readiness to write under festival deadlines. Your application should show critical thinking and a distinctive perspective, even if you have limited published work. Be honest about your background and what you would bring to film criticism.
Pathway
Related opportunities
FIPRESCI / Warsaw Film Festival
Opens: June · Closes: August
The FIPRESCI Warsaw Critics Project is a film criticism workshop held during the Warsaw Film Festival, now in its third decade. The programme brings together young critics from across Central and Eastern Europe for intensive mentorship from established film journalists, with participants writing reviews and features published during the festival. Past participants have gone on to write for Screen International, IndieWire, The Hollywood Reporter, and Cineuropa.
Cineuropa
GoCritic! is a pan-European training programme for emerging film journalists and critics, run by Cineuropa with funding from Creative Europe MEDIA. Since 2022, the programme has partnered with the Animation Festival Network across five Central and Eastern European festivals. Participants write reviews under the mentorship of experienced critics including Boyd van Hoeij, Neil Young, and Dana Linssen, with their work published on Cineuropa and Zippy Frames.
CUE Art Foundation / AICA-USA
The CUE Art Foundation Art Critic Mentorship Program, run in partnership with AICA-USA, pairs emerging writers with established art critics to produce original long-form essays about artists exhibiting at CUE's gallery in New York. The programme offers sustained editorial mentorship and the opportunity to develop ambitious critical writing for publication, providing a rare supported pathway into professional art criticism.