Biography

Neil Young programmer

Neil Young is an freelance writer, curator and film-maker from Sunderland on the north-east coast of England, now resident in Vienna. He has reviewed new films at major festivals regularly for The Hollywood Reporter since 2008 and has contributed numerous features to Sight & Sound since 2010. He regularly contributes to other international publications, including a column on short documentaries for Modern Times Review. 

A member of FIPRESCI and the London Critics' Circle, he routinely attends 25+ film-festivals each year and has served on more than two dozen juries since 2001 including Cannes' Semaine de la Critique (2013) and others at Venice, Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam and Mexico City (Ficunam). He currently works for several festivals in consultation, programming and/or moderation capacities including the Viennale, Vienna Shorts (as head of the Austrian national-competition section), Crossing Europe (Linz, Austria) and Kortfilmfestivalen (Grimstad, Norway). Between 2011-15 he was Director of the Bradford International Film Festival, held at the U.K.'s National Media Museum.

His films as director include the shorts Vilniu Detroit (2017), Towing Dispatch (2018) and Fictional Breweries (2020). His 103-minute experimental documentary Rihaction premiered at the 2019 Diagonale, Graz. In the same year he made his big-screen acting debut in Joanna Hogg's Sundance-winning feature The Souvenir (executive producer Martin Scorsese).