Žiga Brdnik

Žiga Brdnik works as a freelance film critic for the second biggest, Maribor based Slovenian newspaper Večer, for the film magazine Ekran and for the social sciences magazine Dialogi. He is a program selector for the Association for film culture development Maribor, which is organising the Intimate Cinema program in GT22, the Minoriti Open-air Cinema and Mobile Udarnik projections. Before, he had the same position at Cinema Udarnik Maribor. He is a co-host of the film talk series Extremely Slovene (#EkstremnoSlovensko), which included Slovenian female filmmakers and was published as a book in 2019. He was a jury member of the FIPRESCI jury at the Festival of Slovenian Film 2017, at Prishtina International Film Festival 2018, Fekk – Ljubljana Festival of Short Films 2018, at Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival 2019, at the Viennale festival 2019 and at Ljubljana International Film Festival 2020. He was also a member of the main jury at the Shots international Short Film Festival in Slovenj Gradec in 2018. And is a member of the comission, awarding the Glazer award for exceptional achievements in the field of film in the city of Maribor. He mentored a film critics workshop at Festival of Documentary Film Ljubljana, a film debate series in the City Library Maribor and is organising film lectures and debates for different generations of film-lovers from school-children to seniors. He is also the moderator of the film and arts podcast Maribor Is The Future.