MWFF Critics Lab 2025
We’re thrilled to announce this year’s cohort for the MWFF Critics Lab. Each year we select a small group of emerging critics to experience MWFF as an in-house critic. As part of the experience, MWFF Critics are mentored by industry professionals who help them to produce a portfolio of work. They also get the opportunity to meet filmmakers, watch all of the films in the program, and connect with programmers and the MWFF festival team. This year we welcome Olivia Jones, Amelia Leonard, Michelle Huang and Eina Tubadeza. They will be mentored by Mel Campbell and Jamie Tram!
MEET OUR MENTORS
Jamie Tram is a writer and filmmaker based in Naarm. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Spectrum - The Saturday Age, Senses of Cinema, and elsewhere. She is the Small Screens Editor for The Big Issue Australia and a film critic for ABC News.
Mel Campbell is a cultural critic working on unceded Wurundjeri country. She has contributed to many print and digital outlets, and her film and TV reviews can be heard regularly on ABC Hobart and ABC Sydney radio. Mel is also an academic copyeditor who has taught editing and publishing, media and communication studies, English literature, professional writing and journalism. Find her at @incrediblemelk
Meet our critics
Olivia Jones is a budding writer, critic, and film enthusiast based in Naarm/Melbourne. A third-year Communications student at RMIT, Olivia is undertaking a minor in cinema studies where she has developed a particular passion for screenwriting. Olivia is inspired by the notion of cinema as language, with its ability to communicate across physical and socio-cultural barriers.
Eina Nicole Tubadeza is a Filipino queer writer born in the South Eastern suburbs of Australia. She currently studies a Bachelor of Creative Writing with a cinema major at RMIT. She has adored films since childhood, and aspires to implement her passion into professional practice through writing for and about movies as a critic and/or filmmaker.
Amelia Leonard is an essayist, writer and emerging critic from Melbourne, Australia. She is a committee member of the Senses of Cinema film journal and the Czech & Slovak Film Festival of Australia.
Michelle Huang: Though hailing from the "film capital" of Wellington, "Wellywood," Aotearoa New Zealand, when Michelle moved to Naarm/Melbourne for university, film was hardly a hobby. However, after inspired encounters with writers and serendipitous cinematic experiences, films now inform her life and habits. She is a recent graduate in Screen Studies and French, and a Chantal Akerman and Agnes Varda devotee.