Wen-Juenn Lee
Wen-Juenn writes poetry on unceded Wurundjeri land. In her writing, she is interested in gaps, leaks and spillage. She was the Hyphenated Projects x Liminal Writing Fellow and a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow, and was awarded the Tina Kane Emergent Writer Award. Her writing has been published in HEAT, Meanjin, Cordite and Going Down Swinging, among others.
Website: https://wen-juenn.github.io/
Instagram: @wenjuenn
Location: Melbourne
Movie location I call home: Avatar 2 – it rocks.
What was the film or experience that made you want to write about the screen? I literally can’t remember anything about the film now, but I was watching Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Red in the Three Colours Trilogy. I was trying to articulate something of that experience after, something that felt singular, like Kieślowski was talking to me and only me. I didn’t want the film to end. I wanted to stay in that space forever. I tried to articulate it to someone, and it felt bad, like I had cheapened the film, or failed at what I was trying to capture. This failure to perfectly describe what I had experienced, this desire/dissatisfaction/hunger to pinpoint something about the film, felt very specific to the quality of screen, which does something particular with time. The moment comes and passes by, but it’s too quick for me to articulate.
Why do you think film criticism matters in 2026? I think film criticism matters because it looks at that tension between time, image and sound, between the spectacle and the silent. What do those things mean in a time-poor, oversaturated ‘now’?
Who is a critic that inspires you? One of my favourite writers is Janet Malcolm. She’s funny and astute, and she always does meta-commentary on whatever she is observing, which is a kind of criticism. My experience reading The Journalist and the Murderer, which is about the journalistic encounter between subject/writer and the ethics of journalism, was literal glee – at how precise Malcolm is, at how agile and fluid her writing can feel, and at her capacity to point towards herself.
In five words (or less), the future of cinema is: Without Timothée Chalamet (I’m sorry!!!).
What’s the best thing you’ve seen this year so far? I recently saw Blow Up by Michelangelo Antonioni. I loved it for its mildly distasteful protagonist, its end scene, miming and because I don’t really know what to make of it.
What’s your MIFF 2026 theme music? ‘Surround’ by Hiroshi Yoshimura.