Film at Lincoln Center announces the participants for its 2024 FLC Artists Academy and FLC Critics Academy, which will take place during the 62nd New York Film Festival. The mission of the FLC Academy Programs is to support the next generation of film artists and critics and to foster a film culture that embraces diverse storytelling and points of view. 

The FLC Artists Academy, led by award-winning filmmaker Stacey Marbrey, taps into the rich New York film community to offer an immersive experience for early-career filmmakers, with an emphasis on creating opportunities for people from underrepresented communities. This year’s cohort will join a three-day intensive workshop during the New York Film Festival, getting an opportunity to gain invaluable insight from experienced filmmakers, industry leaders, and Academy alumni. Panels, case studies, roundtable discussions, and networking opportunities will focus on the participants’ career development, the collaborative process of filmmaking, and strategies for making a sustainable living in their field. Past mentors and speakers have included Paul Schrader, Christine Vachon, Steve McQueen, Ed Lachman, Ira Deutchman, Joanna Hogg, the Safdie brothers, and more.

The participants for this year’s FLC Artists Academy are Nada Bedair, Zoë Hodge, Bianca Jones, Jard Lerebours, Mackie Mallison, Oliver McGoldrick, Philip Thompson, Bren Wyona, Tang Yi, and Kevin Yu.  

The FLC Critics Academy is produced by Film Comment magazine and led by its editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute. The program offers invaluable experience in both the craft and business of film criticism. Participants will join a two-day intensive workshop prior to the New York Film Festival where established members of the industry—including working critics, editors, programmers, distributors, and publicists—will cover topics including pitching and freelancing, the editorial process, covering festivals, interviewing, social media for critics, and more. Participants will also receive full press access to NYFF and opportunities to cover the films in the festival for Film Comment, MUBI Notebook, Filmmaker Magazine, and Documentary Magazine under the mentorship of editors from each publication. Past Critics Academy participants have gone on to write for publications such as The Atlantic, Brooklyn Magazine, The Guardian, Huffington Post, L.A. Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, National Review, New Republic, New York Review of Books, Paper, The Paris Review, Remezcla, Reverse Shot, Vice, The Village Voice, Vulture, and more. 

This year’s FLC Critics Academy participants are Lucia Ahrensdorf, Amanda Chen, Julia Gunnison, Matilda Hague, Jonathan Mackris, Celia Mattison, Carly Mattox, and Madeline Ostdick.

More information on the 2024 FLC Academy Programs participants can be found below.


2024 FLC Artists Academy

NADA BEDAIR
Nada Bedair is a BAFTA scholar and an award-winning Egyptian filmmaker based in New York. She is currently completing her MFA in film at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has been featured in various film festivals, including Palm Springs ShortFest, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, and New York International Children’s Film Festival. She is passionate about social justice, particularly gender and racial equality. She aspires to empower women of color by portraying strong female Muslim Egyptian characters in her work.
Nadabedair.com
Instagram: @nadabedair 

ZOË HODGE
Zoë Hodge is a national and international award-winning writer and director born in the Boogie-Down-Bronx. Her work often explores yearning and the deep solitude that comes from denying yourself your desires and all that’s natural to you. Zoë’s recent short film, Skate, premiered at Outfest 2023 after winning the Outfest x Concord Pitch Festival. Skate screened at 10 festivals including Outfest and Berlin’s XPOSED Queer Film Festival. Skate also screened at Key West’s 2024 Annual Pride Week. Her award-winning rom-com script, Flash, was selected as the grand prize winner of Network ISA’s Table Read My Screenplay, and David Mahmoudieh (Superman & Lois) directed a live table read of it. Zoë graduated from Fordham University with a B.A. in film and from Royal Holloway, University of London with an M.A. in screenwriting.
Instagram: @sincerely_zoe_ 

BIANCA LAVERNE JONES
Bianca LaVerne Jones is a dynamic force in the world of film and theater. As an actor, director, and filmmaker, she has made significant contributions to the arts. Bianca served as an Associate Director on Broadway for the acclaimed production Chicken and Biscuits. Her educational journey includes attending the North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA), SUNY Purchase Acting Conservatory, and earning a master’s degree in directing from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Bianca’s film career is marked by projects such as Mother’s Milk (2021) and the Emmy-nominated series The Gaze (Episodes 108 & 109). Mabel (about Mabel Mercer), starring Tony winner Trazana Beverley, is circulating in national and international film festivals. Her latest short film, You Are a Flower, explores the transformative journey of a woman choosing herself.
Instagram: @biancalavernejones 
Facebook: Bianca LaVerne Jones

JARD LEREBOURS
Jard Lerebours is a New York-based Queer-Black magician in the tradition of Djibril Diop Mambéty. His practice straddles the worlds of cinema and video art. Jard approaches filmmaking as a conversation between friends and family guided by their communal West Indian upbringing. He is an active member of the Meerkat Media Artist Collective. As a film programmer, Jard’s first program, “Samkofa,” in collaboration with Film Diary NYC, featured genre-defying and experimental work by Black filmmakers. Their latest program, “Samkofa 2,” was shown at Millenium Film Workshop and centered work around Black kinship and community. Jard’s work has been showcased internationally at BAM, DCTV, Maysles Documentary Center, Third Horizon Film Festival, Indie Memphis Film Festival, Uppsala Short Film Festival, and Film Diary NYC. He is currently in development for Wavebuilder, an afro-surrealist nonfiction short that explores Black masculinity and Black beauty standards through the dying art of 360 waves.
Instagram: jard_lere 

MACKIE MALLISON
Mackie Mallison is a filmmaker living in Brooklyn, New York. He is a 2024 Sundance Ignite Fellow and was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2023. His work has screened at the New York Film Festival, SXSW, Palm Springs, BAM, DOC NYC, SIFF, and BFI London Film Festival. Mackie’s short films, Chuu Chuu, It Smells Like Springtime, and Live From the Clouds were acquired by Criterion Channel in 2024. He is a graduate of Pratt Institute, where he was the recipient of the Adobe Creativity Scholarship. Mackie is currently developing his debut feature film, participating in the 2024 Gotham Week Project Market.
Social Media Handle: @mackiemallison

OLIVER MCGOLDRICK  
Oliver McGoldrick is an Irish filmmaker/doctor currently based in New York City. He grew up in the countryside outside of Belfast and received his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh. He divides his time between Northern Ireland, where he continues to work in emergency medicine, and New York City, where he is a thesis MFA candidate in the graduate film program at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. His work is inspired by his life in New York and his experience working in health care, where often in the grimmest of circumstances there is only a fine line between tragedy and comedy. He is currently developing his thesis short film, Barnyard, as well as the feature film iteration of his short film, Three Keenings (2024), which will premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in 2024.
Instagram: @omcgoldrick

PHILIP THOMPSON
Philip Thompson is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker, named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2023, and a Sundance x Adobe Ignite Fellow in 2024. His work examines popular media’s influence on culture, focusing on the emotional impact of media consumption and the one-sided relationship between viewers and image subjects. His latest short, Living Reality, won Best Experimental at the Oscar-Qualifying Athens International Film+Video Festival in 2024. Thompson’s previous film, I’m At Home, is available on NoBudge and was listed as one of its 2023 Films of the Year. His work has garnered accolades at festivals such as Brooklyn, Onion City Experimental Film Festival, and NFFTY, also screening at Palm Springs ShortFest, Atlanta Film Festival, Lago Film Fest, and Chicago Underground. In 2023, he co-founded the Ithaca Experimental Film Festival. He is currently developing his first feature film with support from the Sundance Institute.
Instagram: iamphilipt

BREN WYONA
Bren Wyona was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in Southern California. Their work explores shifting class landscapes, identity loss, and communal recovery through hybrid narrative and documentary media. Bren’s latest short film, supported by Untitled Filmmaker Organization (UFO) and Zeiss, that with which ringing is done, held above, in place, is a dynamic road trip documentary that investigates her own Diné ancestors and the Indian Child Welfare Act through the stronghold lens of Cowboy and Indian cinema. Bren is a Flaherty Fellow, an Oolite Arts Grant Recipient, and a current Artist-in-Residence at the Brooklyn Academy of Music through a fellowship with the UFO Short Film Lab. They are in development for their first feature film, Meteorite Shepherds, a narrative set in New Mexico and Ireland.
Instagram and Letterboxd: @brenwyona

TANG YI
Tang Yi was born and raised in Fuzhou, China. She moved to Hong Kong for college to study accounting. During her studies, she discovered her passion for the arts and initially pursued a career in music. After the release of her debut EP, she applied to the graduate film program at NYU Tisch with a music video and was awarded a scholarship. In 2021, her second short film, All the Crows in the World, won the Short Film Palme d’Or at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Tang Yi considers herself a cinema nomad. She is a recent participant at La Residence du Festival in Paris, along with the Torino ScriptLab and Berlinale Talents Script Station for her debut feature. Yi’s works focus on telling stories about women, underrepresented groups, and social issues. She captures these themes through a subversive, darkly comedic film lens, which is a signature style of hers.
Instagram: @sistertangy

KEVIN XIAN MING YU
Kevin Xian Ming Yu is a non-binary filmmaker from Queens who is committed to telling the stories of underrepresented communities, specifically representing the Asian-American communities and diaspora in New York. They are a 2023-2024 UFO Film Lab filmmaker. Kevin has also worked as a cinematographer on various short form content and two feature films, Verde and Anna Comes Home. Their work as a director has been featured on Wonderland and screened at festivals such as the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, NFFTY, and NFMLA. Their work as a cinematographer has been featured on Short of the Week and the A.V. Club and has screened at festivals such as the New Orleans Film Festival, Energa Camerimage Festival, and the Nashville Film Festival.
Instagram: @kvinyu

2024 FLC Critics Academy

LUCIA AHRENSDORF
Lucia Arce Ahrensdorf is a Bolivian-American filmmaker and writer whose work has been featured in Foreign Policy, Bright Wall/Dark Room, and Screen Slate, with an upcoming piece in MUBI Notebook. She specializes in South American film and politics, documentary, and experimental cinema. Lucia’s experience spans international film sales, television development, commercial production, and literary representation. She holds a B.A. in Cinema and Media Studies from the University of Chicago.
Instagram and Twitter: @lucia.o.a

AMANDA Y.  CHEN
Amanda Y. Chen is a writer and critic from San Diego interested in transnational narratives, psychogeography, and aesthetics. Her critical work and essays are in print and online in BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Catapult, The Drift, The New Republic, Slate, Triangle House Review, and elsewhere. Her short fiction has appeared in Maudlin House. During the day, Amanda is the events manager and editorial assistant at Bellevue Literary Review. She studied economics, data science, and philosophy at UC Berkeley, graduating with honors. She loves films with road trips, beautiful interiors, weird time, and unadulterated desire, and naturally, now lives in Brooklyn.
Instagram: @amandaychen
X: @manderpillar

JULIA GUNNISON
Julia Gunnison is a writer, editor, and arts administrator based in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Reverse Shot, Screen Slate, and Bright Wall/Dark Room, and her interests include nonfiction film forms and cinematic interpretations of urban space. She is an alumna of the 2023–24 Reverse Shot Emerging Critics Workshop. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Syllabus, a weekly publication for nontraditional syllabi. Julia is currently an artist initiatives manager at Creative Capital, and was previously coordinator for the Sundance Documentary Fund. She has served as a grant application reviewer for the Sundance Institute, the International Documentary Association, and the Catapult Film Fund.
nstagram: @jiwliyu

MATILDA HAGUE
Matilda Hague is film critic, programmer, translator, and producer based in Mexico City. She currently works for FICUNAM and her work has been published in La Rabia, Reverse Shot, and Retina Latina. Originally from France, she completed a bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies and anthropology at Wesleyan University, where she programmed the Film Series. Since moving to Mexico, she has produced several independent films and received a master’s in film studies from UNAM. She has served on the jury of several film festivals, including Black Canvas Contemporary Film Festival and FICUNAM, and received the Fósforo Award in 2021. In June 2022, she attended the Guadalajara Film Festival as part of the Press Talents program and was awarded Best Film Criticism Award. In 2023, she participated in the Cine_Z program for young programmers hosted by the Spanish Cultural Center in Mexico.
Instagram: @shrek_official__
X: @matitwo2 

JONATHAN MACKRIS
Jonathan Mackris is a PhD candidate in the Film and Media Department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also a member of its Program in Critical Theory. His writing has appeared in Film Comment, MUBI Notebook, Screen Slate, Senses of Cinema, and Sabzian, among others. He received his B.A. from Chapman University and his M.A. at the University of Southern California, where he was an Annenberg Fellow. In that time, he also worked as an archivist at the Warner Bros. Archive in Los Angeles. He also works occasionally as a translator of French, and programs films in the Bay Area in collaboration with the film collective Discordia.
Twitter: @feuilladist 

CELIA MATTISON
Celia Mattison is a film critic and culture writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Slate, Vulture, and Bright Wall/Dark Room. She was an Ann Friedman Weekly fellow in 2022. Celia is the author of Deeper Into Movies, a newsletter about the unasked questions of cinema, and is an amateur scuba diver.
Instagram: @celia.mattison

CARLY MATTOX
Carly Mattox is a film writer and programmer hailing originally from Montgomery, Alabama, now based in New York. Her writing has appeared in Sight & Sound, Girls on Tops, The Brooklyn Rail, MUBI Notebook, and Bright Wall/Dark Room, among others, and she has produced video essays for Little White Lies. She studied journalism at NYU and graduated from the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England, with a master’s degree in film studies, programming, and curation. An amateur ballroom dancer, her critical interests lie at the intersection of dance, ritual, horror, and folklore; her M.A. graduation project featured a transatlantic film program juxtaposing the traditions of American Southern gothic and British folk horror.
X: @carlymattox
Instagram: @carlyisawriter 

MADELINE OSTDICK  
Madeline Ostdick is a writer and programmer with a particular interest in classic Hollywood, cult cinema, and genre film of the 20th century. A Texan expat living in Brooklyn, she earned her degree in cinema studies at New York University with a focus on gender and sexuality. She is the creator of The Spread, a monthly newsletter and film database of programming based on streaming availability. Her critical philosophy is to challenge the conventional narratives of film history by highlighting films that have been historically overlooked, undervalued, or underserved by traditional criticism, particularly lowbrow genres like exploitation cinema, “women’s pictures,” and pornographic film. Her approach is irreverent, progressive, and deeply personal. She was a programmer for the 2024 Manassat Film Festival, and her work has appeared in Bright Wall/Dark Room and Natural Traveler Magazine.
Instagram and X: @madelineostdick