Announcing: 2022 Jury Line-Up!

We are incredibly honoured to announce the fabulous line-up of jurors for this year’s LJMU MA Short Film Festival. There are three jurors per strand for a total of nine talented contributors choosing the winners in the categories of Best Fiction, Best Animation, and Best Documentary.

Not only are there three strands, and three jurors per strand, we’ve drawn from three specific places to choose our jury: industry professionals, undergraduate students at LJMU, and the previous winners from last year’s LJMU MA Short Film Festival.

In the fiction strand we’ve invited Lydia Beilby, programmer for the Black Box strand of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Karol Ulman whose film End of the World won the Paper Bird Award for Best Fiction, and Aiden Walsh a third year film studies student at LJMU with a passion for directing and film criticism.

For documentary, we’ve asked Arlin Golden of the Video Project to join us alongside filmmaker Gordon Moore whose film Rain Pot won the Paper Bird Award for Best Documentary, and Faye Moffitt also a third year film studies student at LJMU with a keen interest in Classical Hollywood cinema.

Last but not least, in the animation strand we welcome critic and curator Michael Pattison who is a Director of Alchemy Film & Arts, Katarzyna Orłowska whose film Blue Monday won the Paper Bird Award for Best Animation, and Toby Winter another third year film studies student at LJMU with an interest in animation.

The groups of jurors will get to preview the films and then deliberate, ultimately choosing just ONE film to put forward as this year’s winner. The winner will receive the Paper Bird Award (currently being made!) and of course, the recognition from the jury and programmers.

The juries certainly have their work cut out for them as competition will be stiff this year – the 39 films selected represent the very best out of over 1400 submissions. We can’t wait to see what they think!

Find out more about our jury and award here and tell us what you think in the comments!