Outspoken, opinionated and never lost for words, Mark Kermode is the UK’s best known and most trusted film critic.

He is the resident film reviewer for The Observer; for BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sony award-winning Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review; for the BBC News Channel’s Review Show and for BBC2’s Culture Show. Additionally, Mark hosts a film soundtrack show on Scala Radio on Saturdays. On his ground-breaking Kermode Uncut Blog he airs his personal views on what most fires him up about cinema, and invites viewers to give their own opinions.

Audiences have been delighted by the trademark passionate rants about films that have earned him his cult following in print, broadcast and online.

Mark Kermode began his career in film journalism and broadcasting in the 1980s after studying English at Manchester University, where he wrote his PhD thesis on horror fiction. He began working for magazines such as City Life, Time Out, Fangoria and the NME. Currently he is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound.

After a spell at BBC Radio 1, he presented Channel 4’s ‘Extreme Cinema’ strand. He has written and presented numerous documentaries for both Channel 4 and the BBC, including In Search of the Blair Witch, On the Edge of Blade Runner, Fear of God: 25 Years of the Exorcist and Poughkeepsie Shuffle: Tracing the French Connection.

Mark plays bass in skiffle band the Dodge Brothers. Their second CD, The Sun Set, was recorded in Sun Studios (where Elvis made his first albums) and was released in May 2013. The Dodge Brothers regularly team up with Neil Brand to accompany classic silent movies with newly composed scores.

With his wife Professor Linda Ruth Williams, Mark curates the Shetland Film Festival and regular seasons at the Bfi.

Mark has published monographs on The Shawshank Redemption, The Exorcist and Silent Running.

His best-selling autobiographical movie-related books are It’s Only A Movie (2010), The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex (2011) and Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics (2013).

He regularly does sell-out tours of the UK with film-related stand-up shows.

Mark Kermode tweets as @kermodemovie

William Ayot is a poet, author, coach, teacher and ritualist. He works with individuals and groups to explore leadership through poetry, performance and ritual. He is currently Poet-in-Residence at Saïd Business School, Oxford University and sits on the board of Literature Wales. William is a Member of the Welsh Academi, a Fellow of the Guild of Mythodrama Practitioners, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts & Manufactures. He lives with his wife, Juliet Grayson Ayot, in a restored Monmouthshire Gentry House near Chepstow, South East Wales.

Simon Brew is a maverick writer and editor. He is the founder and editor of Film Stories, a monthly print magazine, a weekly podcast, a YouTube channel and a series of live events. Previously he conceived, launched and edited denofgeek.com. Simon writes and edits trade and consumer titles such as Minecraft World magazine, in the areas of film, gaming, mental health, IT and TV – and Kevin Costner. He hosts Q&As, panels and live events and his company handles full editorial production of magazines and websites.

Anna Smith is a film critic and broadcaster and the host of all-female film review show Girls On Film in which she discusses film with female critics and interviews actors and directors about their work. She is a regular film critic for BBC News, Sky News, BBC Radio, Metro, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Sight & Sound, Empire and more.

If you stayed up to watch the Oscars this year, you will have seen Anna commentating from Sky Cinema’s sofa – and if you browse through Metro newspaper in the morning, you’ll have read her ’60 Seconds’ interviews. Anna hosts Q&As with film stars in cinemas all over London.

Before specialising in film, Anna was the first woman to become the editor of a UK dance music magazine, Wax. She dedicated herself to film criticism in 2000. Her twitter is @annasmithjourno.

Award-winning broadcaster, writer, educationalist and cultural historian Sir Christopher Frayling is best known for his study of popular culture. His most recent publications are The Yellow Peril: Dr Fu Manchu & the Rise of Chinophobia (2014), Frankenstein: The First 200 Years (2017) and Once Upon a Time in the West: Shooting a Masterpiece (2019).

He has had a wide output as a writer and critic on subjects ranging from vampires to westerns and has written and presented television series such as The Art of Persuasion on advertising, Strange Landscape on the Middle Ages, The Face of Tutankhamun and Nightmare: Birth of Horror. He has conducted a series of radio and television interviews with figures from the world of film, including Woody Allen, Deborah Kerr, Ken Adam, Francis Ford Coppola and Clint Eastwood.

Frayling studied spaghetti westerns and specifically director Sergio Leone. His highly popular biography of Leone, Something To Do With Death (2000) was followed by the DVD documentaries of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and audio commentaries for the special edition DVD releases of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in the West and The Colossus of Rhodes. He curates an international travelling exhibition on Sergio Leone.

In 2001, he was awarded a knighthood for “Services to Art and Design Education” and chose as his motto, Perge scelus mihi diem perficias’, which can be translated as ‘Proceed, varlet, and let the day be rendered perfect for my benefit’. That is, ‘Go ahead, punk, make my day’.

He has 18 books to his credit and has been chairman of the Arts Council and the Design Council, a governor of the British Film Institute, and trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum where he co-curated the Hollywood Costume exhibition, which was exhibited from October 2012 to January 2013.