Swedish film critic, translator, freelance writer, and festival programmer of Ethiopian origin.
Katarina Hedrén, former chairperson of the Swedish film festival CinemAfrica, is a freelance writer and film programmer based in Johannesburg. She is the co-programmer of South Africa's oldest and biggest independent film club, the First Wednesday Film Club, the director of the European Film Festival in South Africa and a long-time co-organiser of People to People International Documentary Conference (P2P). She is a recurring member of the Durban International Film Festival and Tri-Continental Human Rights Film Festival's film selection committees and evaluates film projects for the Durban Film Mart and the KwaZulu-Natal Film Commission. In 2015 Katarina was a programme advisor for the London based film festival Film Africa. Furthermore Katarina works as a project coordinator for the Goethe-Institut South Africa, previously for Mokolo - a pan-African online platform for African film industries - and currently on a networking project for photo schools in Africa. Publications that Katarina has contributed to as a writer include Africa is a Country, Africiné, The Africa Report, The Times (South Africa) the Swedish film magazine FLM and the book Gaze Regimes - Films and Feminisms in Africa (Mistry& Schuhmann, Wits University Press, 2015).



Katarina HEDRÉN is Film Critic at Africiné Magazine (Dakar). She was Coordinator at MOKOLO (Lagos), portal on African films. She worked at Encounters South African international documentary film festival. In 2016, she is the new Festival Director for The European Film Festival (EUFF, coordinated by the Goethe-Institut South Africa, hosted by Ster-Kinekor Cinema Nouveau, and organised in partnership with the European Union and 11 European cultural agencies or embassies in South Africa).
She appears as actress in TELL ME SWEET SOMETHING (2015) directed by her husband, Akin Omotoso.
Katarina HEDRÉN is living in Joburg, South Africa.