This is a big anniversary year for the 80th Mostra del Cinema, but no less of a frisson for the writers and management of The Film Verdict, as we celebrate the start of our third year in business on a digital platform that has grown hugely and well, and is still expanding week by week.
When five Verdict critics get off the boat and step onto the Lido, we will be very much aware that two exciting, labor-intensive years have passed since our first festival debut — which took place at at Venice in 2021. Our mission was immediately understood and supported by Venice president Roberto Cicutto, festival director Alberto Barbera and the head of international press Michela Lazzarin: to promote the festival’s program of world cinema through independent reviews and the power of writing that dives deep into the zeitgeist of our time.
To a rather amazing extent, the objectives TFV set itself at its inception have been fulfilled; namely, to promote timely, stimulating international cinema via a greatly increased number of reviews by authoritative writers, reviews that had largely stopped coming out of the major trade magazines. It was this woeful void that The Film Verdict set out to fill, becoming the essential missing link in the production-promotion-distribution cycle of world cinema. And after more than 1,000 reviews published in two years, we can take justifiable pride in a promise fulfilled.
The idea for the platform seemed self-evident when, back in the summer of 2021, a group of frustrated critics approached Eric Mika, the former publisher of The Hollywood Reporter and Variety’s former international topper. He understood that a website was needed for quality film criticism that addressed those directors and, indeed, entire countries that were being increasingly overlooked by the trades, even if the films were stunning and the world sales agents were already there. What was lacking were serious, detailed reviews that could reach the industry and amplify the patient programming work of festivals anxious to promote their selections around the globe.
Beginning at that Venice Film Festival, TFV began to take form. Our initial group comprised four “senior critics” – Deborah Young, Stephen Dalton and Boyd Van Hoeij from The Hollywood Reporter and Jay Weissberg from Variety, with the friendly support of THR’s Jordan Mintzer, who opted to join as a contributing critic. On Eric Mika’s side, the addition of the multi-talented Kelly Jones as director of business and operations completed a small but highly functional management team.
Meanwhile, the reputation of The Film Verdict’s reviewers continued to grow with the appearance of Hong Kong-based Clarence Tsui and Naija (Nigeria)-native Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, Latin American writers Patricia Boero and CineVerdict editor Lucy Virgen, and Berlin-based New Zealander Carmen Gray.
Then a question arose: why were none of the traditional trades paying attention to short films, which were sweeping through festivals with the fresh breath of future talents? At that point Londoner Ben Nicholson came along, and his sophisticated, full-length reviews (which recently surpassed 100) made TFV a focal point for the short film revolution. Ben also stepped into the role of artistic director at the first short film festival to ever be held in the Metaverse, the innovative and virtual Alpha Film Festival, held in March in the MILC metaverse and hosted by The Film Verdict.
That basically left only North America uncovered – the place most of our readers hail from. Having established a solid reputation with our non-U.S. reviews, we began with Canadian writer Kevin Jagernauth and worked our way over to Los Angeles, where TFV’s chief U.S. critic Alonso Duralde took over Hollywood reviews; he was recently joined by William Bibbiani. This Venice will also mark the first review bylines of our Swiss-based festival writer Max Borg, who will be covering VR Immersive in depth, alongside his amusing forays into the parallel universes of genre cinema.
Today TFV is a brand name known around the world, from Venice to Hollywood. Our weekly Critics’ Choice selections and festival dailies reach an audience of over 26,000 worldwide industry readers every day, with phenomenal open rates for our newsletters. With Spanish language reviews appearing regularly under the banner CineVerdict and Arab-language reviews in the pipeline this fall on the dedicated platform TFV Middle East, TFV is truly a force in full expansion.
And it all started in Venice.
