Pelin Çilgin

Pelin Çılgın is a film critic, curator, and PhD student researching Japanese literature, culture, and film. They currently curate films for several international and local NGOs and organizations with a focus on queer, genre, and East Asian works, and they are a jury member for the KORK International Horror Film Festival, the only horror film festival in Turkey.

Pelin has a BA in Business Chinese from Beijing Language and Culture University, China, and an MA in Film and Television from Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey. For their BA thesis written and defended in Mandarin Chinese, they did a comparative analysis of Japanese and Chinese manga/manhua and anime/donghua industries in terms of historical development, economic value, and cultural soft power. Then, they pivoted to research body horror and gore in Japanese horror cinema from a queer lens for their MA thesis. They aim to expand this MA topic to include other forms of Japanese horror visual media for their PhD research, and also discover Sinophone horror. Academic research areas include Japan, the Sinosphere, film/media studies, film curation, online cultures, horror studies, and queer feminist readings.

Alumnus of prestigious film professional programs like the Berlinale Talents, Talents Sarajevo, and more. Bylines as a critic include Senses of Cinema, Cineuropa, Zippy Frames, among others. Voting member under the film critic/journalist branch at the European Film Academy.