Călin Boto is a film curator, programmer, university educator, film critic, and writer based in Bucharest, serving as an associate curator for the Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF) and short film curator for ESTE Film Festival (Sibiu). A former member of the selection committee of the Berlin Critics’ Week (2025) and an alumnus of several film criticism workshops (Locarno Academy, Sarajevo Talents), he writes for publications such as Filmexplorer (Switzerland), yanco (Belgium), Films in Frame (Romania), teaches at the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale”, and curates the Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour in Bucharest. He took part in press and industry juries (Festival du nouveau cinéma, Visions du Réel) and reading committees (Queer Palm Lab 2025), and curated film programmes for the Romanian Cinemateque, Sicilia Queer Filmfest, Trieste Film Festival, and V-F-X Ljubljana.
Călin Boto
Călin Boto participated in “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025, a first-ever poll of its kind as a collective love letter to the art of short-form moving image. yanco and Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, in collaboration with Talking Shorts, invited filmmakers, curators, distributors, critics, and scholars worldwide to nominate 10 audiovisual works under sixty minutes that they personally consider the “greatest” of all time. This was Călin Boto’s submission:
| Movie | Original Title | Director | Country | Year | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baby’s Meal Repas de bébé | Louis Lumière | France | 1895 | 1’ | ||
| The Eruption of Mount Pelee Éruption volcanique à la Martinique | Georges Méliès | France | 1902 | 2’ | ||
| Kino-Pravda | Dziga Vertov, Elizaveta Svilova, Mikhail Kaufman | Soviet Union | 1925 | 11’ | ||
| Zéro de conduite : Jeunes diables au collège Zero for Conduct | Jean Vigo | France | 1933 | 41’ | ||
| Fireworks | Kenneth Anger | USA | 1947 | 14’ | ||
| Un Chant d’amour Song of Love | Jean Genet | France | 1950 | 26’ | ||
| Nuit et brouillard Night and Fog | Alain Resnais | France | 1955 | 32’ | ||
| Christmas on Earth | Barbara Rubin | USA | 1963 | 29’ | ||
| Blow Job | Andy Warhol | USA | 1964 | 35’ | ||
| Film for Friends Film pentru prieteni | Radu Jude | Romania | 2011 | 58’ | ||
