Live from Cannes: 2018 Cannes Critics’ Panel – Meet the Jury!

Celebrating our seventh year, for the 71st edition of Cannes, we decided to switch things up for our Cannes Critics’ Panel. First, we expanded our panel to include more of an international critic presence. We also focused on gender parity with almost a divided split between male and female critics. We introduce all twenty folks below with several new names/faces – fitting since this year’s horse race for the Palme d’Or includes several first time comp filmmakers with only Nuri Bilge Ceylan (among the 21 competitors) returning as a former Palme d’Or winner.

In 2011, Pedro Almodóvar was our inaugural “winner” with La piel que habito out-favoring Palme winner The Tree of Life. In 2012, Michael Haneke’s Amour (Palme d’Or) beat out Holy Motors by the smallest of margins. Blue is the Warmest Color easily landed the best of (Palme d’Or as well) in 2013 and still counts as the highest score ever on our charts. In 2014 Dardennes’ Deux Jours, Une Nuit outscored the Palme d’Or winner Winter Sleep. 2015 it was Todd Haynes’ Carol that topped all others on our chart including Palme d’Or winner Dheepan. Toni Erdmann was the toast of our sixteen critics beating out Palme winner in I, Daniel Blake in 2016, and last year Robin Campillo’s BPM was the top pick over Ruben Ostlund’s The Square.

Newbies to our panel include:

Poland and Finland based film journo Marta Balaga who writes for several international newspapers and magazines including “Episodi,” “Dwutygodnik,” and “Cineuropa”. She collaborates with Helsinki International Film Festival – Love & Anarchy. Member of the Finnish Critics’ Association SARV and FIPRESCI.

Hailing from Berlin, we have Beatrice Behn – a senior film critic and editor-in-chief of Kino-Zeit, the largest German language film magazine for arthouse and independent film. She is also a filmmaker and about to graduate from Freie Universität Berlin with a Master’s degree in film studies. She was recently at Hot Docs with The Artist & The Pervert.

We often get our Romanian film news updates from her, Iulia Blaga is a Romanian based film journalist and critic for HotNews.ro and Harper’s BAZAAR Romania.

Mónica Delgado is aPeruvian film critic, journalist and director of Desistfilm, a film magazine about independent and experimental cinema.

We often chat it up with him on the film fest circuit, Toronto based film critic and interviewer Jason Gorber can be found at the CTV News Channel, where he has a weekly review segment on Sunday nights and writes for Dorkshelf.com for Cannes.

Born and raised in Athens, Greece, Poly Lykourgou did her MA in Film at Syracuse University, NY (where she has also obtained an additional MS in Magazine Journalism and Creative Writing). She has been working as a film critic in magazines, newspapers and TV cultural shows for two decades and is the proud co-owner, co-founder and editor of Flix.gr, the most popular and prominent cinema site in Greece.

Writing for PERRO BLANCO, Carlota Moseguí is a film critic, film programmer and FIPRESCI member based out of Madrid.

Daniella Shreir is the editor of feminist film journal Another Gaze, a freelance film researcher and a graphic designer and photographer.

He has covered the Venice Film Festival for us, site friend Tommaso Tocci is a film critic, programmer (Saas-Fee Film Fest in Switzerland) and translator based in Rome who has written for Indiewire, RogerEbert.com, The Film Stage and Filmmaker Magazine.

Film critic at Estonian weekly Eesti Ekspress, Maria Ulfsak is a film critic graduate from the University of Tartu and has a Master’s degree in Film Studies from the University of Warwick. She also works as a programmer for the Baltic Event Co-production Market and is one of the editors of the magazine Estonian Film. Maria Ulfsak is a member of The Estonian Association of Film Journalists and was voted the Film Critic of the Year in 2017.

Returning folks include Denmark’s Per Juul Carlsen, Spain’s Carlos F. Heredero, Belgium’s Fabien Lemercier, China’s Min LIU, France’s Jean-Philippe Guerand and Cédric Succivalli, American Bilge Ebiri, Canadian Marc-André Lussier and naturally a double dose from IONCINEMA.com from Nicholas Bell and I.

1. Marta Balaga – Finland Episodi / Cineuropa
2. Beatrice Behn – KINO-ZEIT
3. Nicholas Bell – IONCINEMA.com
4. Iulia Blaga- Romania HotNews.ro / Harper’s BAZAAR Romania
5. Per Juul Carlsen – Danish National Radio 1
6. Mónica Delgado – Desistfilm
7. Bilge Ebiri – The Village Voice
8. Jason Gorber – Dorkshelf.com / CTV News Channel
9. Jean-Philippe Guerand – Le Film Français
10. Carlos F. Heredero – Caimán Cuadernos de Cine
11. Eric Lavallee IONCINEMA.com
12. Fabien Lemercier Cineuropa.org
13. Min LIU Sina.com
14. Marc-André Lussier – La Presse
15. Poly Lykourgou – Flix.gr
16. Carlota Moseguí – PERRO BLANCO
17. Daniella Shreir – U.K Another Gaze Journal
18. Cédric Succivalli – International Cinephile Society
19. Tommaso Tocci – International Cinephile Society
20. Maria Ulfsak-Sheripova – Estonia Eesti Ekspress

Please visit us twice daily for a critical snapshot of the Official Competition selected films in our star ratings-grid approach. Results will be published as the festival advances and of course, we end the fest with our personal & prediction Palme d’Or predictions. Stay tuned!

Click on the grid below!: