Announcing 2023 pre-selection team

We're excited to announce our pre-selector team for this year's festival! 

Following an open-call, we are introducing 10 individuals to our programming panel. The team are working with Encounters' Head of Programme, Ren Scateni, to assess submissions for the 2023 festival. You can read more about our pre-selector team below.

Submissions for our 2023 festival remain open. We're accepting submissions for short form live action, animation, documentary, experimental/artists’ moving image works.

International Competition Pre-selectors

Jonathan Bygraves (he/him)

Jonathan Bygraves is a film historian and programmer who has curated repertory screenings for over a decade, and a video essayist whose work has featured on releases by several boutique home video labels. He has been a member of the Encounters preselection team since 2009.

Alonso Aguilar (he/him)

Alonso Aguilar is an audiovisual producer, cultural journalist and lecturer from San José, Costa Rica. He does editorial labour in Krinégrafo: Cine y Crítica and his writings have been featured in Mubi Notebook, Bandcamp Daily, Cinema Tropical, photogénie, Cinema Year Zero, and Hyperallergic.

Florian Fernandez (he/him)

Florian Fernandez coordinates the various initiatives elaborated as part of Cannes Court Métrage’s Rendez-vous Industry, five-day forum organised by the Festival de Cannes. Florian is also part of Encounters Film Festival and Montreal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinéma pre-selector teams. He yearly collaborates as part of the European Short Pitch reading committee and The Short Film Lab training program.

Monica Wat (she/her)

Monica Wat is a filmmaker, actor and musician from Hong Kong, now based in the UK. Starting out as an actor at 7, she has since starred in, produced and directed short films and music videos about issues like racism, immigration and transition based on her personal experience. Her short film ASSIMILATION is part of BFI's SCENE Programme. She is also the founder and co-organiser of arts festival MOON FEST, which celebrates East and South East Asian creatives in the UK.

Philippa Walusimbi (she/her)

Philippa has been working alongside musicians, artists whilst programming in various arts organisations such as B:Music, Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust and Sheffield DocFest. Her main passion and role whilst working at such organisations has always been cultural democracy, making sure that all feel welcome, heard and seen from entrance to stage. Philippa recently returned to her home county of South Yorkshire after spending eight months in the Democratic Republic of Congo where she had the pleasure of working alongside and collaborating with artists in the city of Goma. Most recently she co-curated the short film programme for Africa In Motion Film Festival and is part of this year's BFI Innovation Lab cohort at the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield.

Annabel Bai Jackson (she/her)

Annabel Bai Jackson is a curatorial assistant at the Barbican Centre. She is part of Sheffield DocFest’s Youth Jury and Barbican Young Film Programmers, and was on the BFI Critics Mentorship Programme and a member of UK-China Film Collab last year. Her writing has been published in Sight & Sound, Kinfolk, The Arts Desk, and the Oxford Review of Books.

Milo Clenshaw (he/him)

Milo is a curator and writer based in Hawick in the Scottish Borders. He currently works as the Programme Assistant for Alchemy Film & Arts, the home of Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Scotland’s festival of experimental film. His work aims to centre marginalised voices and he believes in art as a powerful tool for social change.

National & South West Competition Pre-selectors

Theo Panagopoulos (he/him)

Jonathan Bygraves is a film historian and programmer who has curated repertory screenings for over a decade, and a video essayist whose work has featured on releases by several boutique home video labels. He has been a member of the Encounters preselection team since 2009.

Isaac Holmes (they/them)

Isaac Holmes is a video essayist, programmer and postgraduate researcher at Lancaster University. They were part of the Showroom Cinema’s Young Programmers and their work focuses on queer cinema and the sociological aspects of representing the LGBT community on screen.

Patrycja Loranc (she/her)

Patrycja Loranc is an experimental filmmaker, artist, writer, and PhD researcher at Plymouth University. She is developing a Psychedelic Film Practice, exploring filmmaking as a tool for mind-revealing. Interested in altered consciousness, transformation and vulnerability, the neurodiversity paradigm and sensory profiles inform her intuitive practice. Co-director of Alternative Night of Experimental Film.