June Laka Antxustegi

June Laka is a freelance film curator, lecturer, and filmmaker. They were formerly director and film curator of the Âge d’Or Film Festival at CINEMATEK, the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, a programme dedicated to independent, avant-garde, and experimental cinema. At the École de Recherche Graphique (erg), they taught a seminar on speculative storytelling through moving images (2024–2026), as well as a course in transdisciplinary and collective research supporting students in the development of their master’s theses.

Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, their research engages with the mechanisms through which stories are constructed: where the narratives that inhabit us come from, how they shape our perception of the world, and how we might emancipate ourselves from the dominant narratives that permeate our lives. Through this lens, they explore works and practices — pedagogical, collective, or subversive — that aim to make visible marginalized political and aesthetic histories.

They are currently developing a film that examines the hegemonic biases and blind spots shaping official historical narratives, with a particular focus on Belgian colonial history and the decolonial movements working to transform them.