Guest Writers

Beatrice Loayza
Beatrice Loayza is a critic and historian based in Brooklyn. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times and her work can be found in the Criterion Collection, Film Comment, the Atlantic, the Nation, the New York Review of Books, 4Columns, and elsewhere. She is also a lecturer in the School of Visual Arts' film department and is currently working on a book about the actresses of the French New Wave.

Christopher Small
Christopher Small is a film critic, programmer, and publisher living in Prague, Czech Republic. He is responsible for editorial and publications at the Locarno Film Festival, including its daily magazine, Pardo, and has headed its Critics Academy since 2017. For four years, he was the international curator at DAFilms and, between 2019 and 2021, served on the Selection Committee at Sheffield DocFest. He is the founder, co-editor, and publisher of Outskirts Film Magazine, a yearly print publication devoted to the cinema of the past and present.

Cristina Fernandes
Cristina Fernandes (Porto, 1966) is an independent researcher in the field of cinema. Since 2004, she has been writing about films and literature on several platforms, currently on the blog Bicho Ruim. She has published articles in magazines and editorial projects dedicated to cinema, as well as translations of authors such as Emil Cioran, Chantal Akerman and Marguerite Duras, with publishers such as Edições 70, BCF and Contracapa. Her career combines criticism, translation and research, reflecting an interest in the dialogue between the arts, thought and moving images.

Fernando José Pereira
Fernando José Pereira (Porto, 1961) has a degree in Painting from the University of Porto and a PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Vigo. Since the 1990s, he has been developing an artistic practice involving the use of video. As a member of the experimental electronic music collective Haarvöl, he has recently been exploring the relationship between video and music. His work is included in the collections of the Serralves Foundation, the Galician Centre for Contemporary Art and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, among others.

Isadora Neves Marques
Isadora Neves Marques is a film director, visual artist, and writer. Her films have premiered at festivals such as Cannes (Critics’ Week), Toronto, and Rotterdam. In 2022, she was awarded the Ammodo Tiger Short Award. In the same year, she was the Official Portuguese Representative at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) and received the Special Prize from the Pinchuk Future Generation Art Prize, among other awards. She is co-founder of the film production company Foi Bonita a Festa and the poetry publisher Livros do Pântano. She is a regular contributor to the e-flux Journal and is the author of the poetry books A Campa de Marx (2025) and Sex as Care and Other Viral Poems (2020), the short story collection Morrer na América (2017) and several anthologies of thought. She is a PhD candidate at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.

Janaína Oliveira
Film researcher and curator. Professor at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ) and consultant for JustFilms — Ford Foundation. She holds a PhD in History and was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Centre for African Studies at Howard University in the USA. Since 2009, she has been developing research and curating films, as well as working as a consultant, jury member and lecturer at various film festivals and institutions in Brazil and abroad. Currently, as well as taking part in other curatorial initiatives, she is a member of the BlackStar Film Festival Selection Committee, the Doc’s Kingdom advisory board and the Criterion Channel curatorial board.

Manuel Loff
Manuel Loff holds a PhD in History and Civilisation from the European University Institute (Florence. He is a professor of Contemporary History at the University of Porto and a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History-NOVA FCSH/IN2PAST and at the Centre d'Estudis sobre Dictadures i Democràcies (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) in the areas of 20th-century political, ideological and social history, particularly in the study of fascism and neo-fascism, revolutions and processes of authoritarian and democratic transition, and collective memory studies. He writes for the daily newspaper Público since 2011.

Maria Castello Branco
Maria Castello Branco is a commentator on CNN Portugal and a columnist for Expresso. She is the co-author of the podcast “Lei da Paridade” (“Parity Law”). She graduated in Political Science and International Relations from the Portuguese Catholic University and completed a master's degree in Political Theory at the London School of Economics. She has worked in public affairs consulting, with experience in strategic communication and public policy.

Pedro João Santos
Journalist, radio broadcaster and film programmer (b. 2001). He writes about pop music for Ípsilon, Público newspaper and other publications (The Guardian, The Quietus, Bandcamp Daily). He works at Antena 1 radio station, for which he created the documentary Madonna: A Lei da Reinvenção (Madonna: The Law of Reinvention). After defending a dissertation on music videos by António Variações and Lena d'Água, he obtained a master's degree in Ethnomusicology from the NOVA University of Lisbon — School of Social Sciences and Humanities. He founded the film club of the Albardeira cultural association, producing and moderating screenings at the Municipal Theatre of Ourém.

Riar Rizaldi
Riar Rizaldi works as an artist and filmmaker. His works have been shown at various international film festivals (including Berlinale, Locarno, IFFR, FID Marseille, BFI London, Cinema du Reel, etc.) as well as Museum of Modern Art (2024), Whitney Biennial (2024), Taipei Biennial (2023), Istanbul Biennial (2023), Venice Architecture Biennale (2021), National Gallery of Indonesia (2019), and other venues and institutions. Recent solo exhibitions and focus programmes have been presented at Gasworks, London (2024); ICA London (2024); Z33, Hasselt (2024); and the Centre de la Photographie Genève (2023), among others.