is the founder of the Scotland-based annual festival Africa in Motion and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Film and TV Studies at the University of Glasgow. A researcher of African and African women’s cinema, she established Africa in Motion in 2006 when she was a PhD student (like many in our team). Her knowledge of the film exhibition industry, curatorial techniques and approaches, and the practical aspects of cinema curation will be hugely influential in our efforts to set up the festival.

is a Bulgarian Emeritus professor of Film Studies at the University of St Andrews, who has published extensively on transnational and world cinema (particularly Bulgarian and Balkan cinemas), film festivals, and the film industry. Her academic and practical knowledge of Eastern European visual culture and its curation as part of European film festivals is indispensable to the festival.

is a London-based film curator, writer, broadcaster, and creative producer and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. A programmer with immense knowledge of world cinema and feminist film, Anna is also experienced in the organisation of film festivals, having served as the Festival Director of Underwire Festival since 2015. Her practical advice with regards to our programme and curatorial process will be essential for the success of Samizdat.

is an Associate Professor at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL and a specialist on early Russian cinema, Soviet cinema, their representation of gender, and contemporary female filmmakers working in Russian. She is also the Co-Chair of the Russian Cinema Research Group, which hosts talks, seminars, and panel discussions with relevant scholars in the field. Her knowledge of Russian and Soviet cinema and their representations of gender will be crucial for the development of our festival programme.

is a Circassian-Uzbek Professor of Gender Studies and decolonial researcher at Linköping University in Sweden. She is a seminal philosopher of postcolonial feminism, who has written widely on post-Soviet culture, politics, and art. She strives to decenter Euromodernity and its exclusionary paradigms through collaborations with intellectuals, activists, social and art movements. Her pioneering academic and collaborative work will be indispensable to ensuring that the festival is inclusive, intersectional, and helps to query reified geopolitical, gender, and racial exclusions.