Hi! My name is Christina Newland and I’m an award-winning freelance writer, broadcaster, and journalist on film and culture. I’m the former lead film critic at the i Newspaper and a contributing editor to Empire Magazine. I have a decade’s worth of experience as an essayist, critic, and reporter, as well as a guest speaker & lecturer. I have appeared across television and radio in the UK and US, including CNN, Channel 4, Sky Arts 'Classic Film', AMC, BBC4 Front Row, and more. My latest book, 'SOFIA COPPOLA: An Unofficial Guide' was published 6 November 2025 by Greenfinch / Quercus Books. I’ve profiled movie stars, written features, lists, reviews, and cover stories for: Sight & Sound Magazine, BBC Culture, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone UK, SSENSE, Mr. Porter, Criterion, Dazed, GQ, EMPIRE, BBC, The Guardian, VICE, Hazlitt, Baffler Mag, The Ringer, and more.
I’m actively seeking commissions for writing, broadcasting, and teaching work across film and culture.
I also dabble in travel and sports writing on occasion.
I have special interests in: the history and politics of cosmetics/glamour, stardom, crime flicks of all kinds, desire and sex, masculinity and femininity onscreen, boxing, 20th century Hollywood, the Vietnam War, and anything involving Italian or Greek films.
My substack newsletter, Sisters Under the Mink, won a UK Freelance Writing Award in 2021, and was included in The Observer’s round-up of great culture newsletters in 2023. Projects Radio, Podcast, and Television
As a film critic/commentator, I have appeared onscreen in a number of documentaries and shows, including CNN’s ‘Marilyn Monroe: Reframed’, Sky Arts’ ‘Steve McQueen: The Lost Movie’, and Sky Arts series ‘Classic Movies: The Story Of’ as well as ‘The Art of Film’, both by 3DD Productions/on NOW TV. Elsewhere, I am the most frequent repeat guest on Mark Kermode’s show BBC4 Screenshot, and also have appeared on BBC3 Free Thinking, Radio 4 Arts Hour, Woman’s Hour, and Monocle Radio. I’ve written scripts and provided voiceover for both Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This podcast and the BBC2 Inside Cinema series.
Live Events and Q+As
Film Programming
I have presented introductions, lectures, and live Q+As with filmmaking talent for audiences across the UK, including for BAFTA, Apple TV, British Film Institute, Deeper into Movies, Broadway Cinema Nottingham, and Glasgow Film Festival, among others. I delivered the keynote speech at Cinema Rediscovered (Bristol Watershed) in 2024.
In January 2025 at the British Film Institute, I curated and presented popular retrospective season ‘Luchino Visconti: Decadence and Decay’.
I have also co-curated and presented touring packages with film exhibitor Park Circus entitled ‘Under the Mink’ (2024) and ‘Pre-Code Hollywood: Rules Were Made to be Broken’ (2022).
In 2021, I also programmed an extensive season for Criterion Channel in the US entitled ‘In the Ring: Boxing On-Screen.’