Film Festival Secrets 2nd Edition

Film
Festival
Secrets
The Ultimate Handbook for
Independent Filmmakers
Christopher Holland
with a foreword by Jarod Neece
Sold to
[email protected]
Film Festival Secrets: The Ultimate Handbook for Independent
Filmmakers
2nd Edition
by Christopher Holland
Copyright © 2019-2020 by Stomp Tokyo and Christopher Holland

All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-9718356-6-5
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system – except
by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review – without
permission in writing from the publisher Find our current contact
information at www.stomptokyo.com or write to
[email protected].
Rev 10x30-19
For Christina, Elizabeth, and Margaret
4 Film Festival Secrets
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Before You Submit 17

Chapter 2 - When You Submit 63
Chapter 3 - While You Wait 87
Chapter 4 - When You Get the Call 121
Chapter 5 - The Pre-Festival Push 135
Chapter 6 - At the Festival 164
Chapter 7 - Aftermath 186
Appendix - Directory of Notable Festivals 194
Acknowledgments
A book is perhaps not as collaborative an endeavor as making a

movie, but there is still a cast and crew working in support of the
author to make it happen. A book’s acknowledgments, then, are the
literary version of an awards speech – no matter how many people
you thank you’re bound to forget someone. If you contributed to this
book in any way, no matter how small, you have my humblest of
thanks. Your possible exclusion from the list below was inadvertent
and unfortunate. So thank you.
Many thanks to those who got me started in my transition from mere

film festival attendance to life “on the inside” at the Austin Film
Festival, particularly Barbara Morgan, Kelly Williams, John
Merriman, Linnea Toney, and Jesse Trussell. My time with them and
the other characters at the festival sparked the idea for this book.
Much of its wisdom is theirs.
To all those with whom I’ve worked and befriended on the festival
circuit, especially those who agreed to critique the book in advance:
Chris Hyams, Lize Burr, all of my colleagues at the now-defunct B-
Side Entertainment, Teeney Hood, Sarah Murphy, Lisa Vandever,
Saskia Wilson-Brown, Jeremy Wine, Jon Gann, Chloe Cook, Nat
Dykeman, Gabe Wardell, Charles Judson, Paula Martinez, Kenny
Blank, Brad Pilcher, Teresa Hollingsworth, Linda Ball, Jim Kolmar,
Drea Clark, Lisa Kaselak, Landon Zakheim, Christen McArdle, Jarod
Neece, Donald Harrison, Lisa Trifone, Amy Nicholson, Michele
Emanuel, Melanie Addington, Molly Fergusson, Scott D. Hanson,
Cameron McAllister, Catherine Pfitzer, Claudette Godfrey, Janet
Pierson, Nick Robinson, Adam Donaghey, Mark Wynns, Will
Hartman, Rachel Goslins, Jay Edwards, James Martin, Jen West,
Brian Udovich, Glenn Abbott, Brooke Keesling, Mike Flanagan,
Cacky Poarch, Melissa Scaramucci, Tim League, Zack Carlson, Lars
Nilsen, Tiffany Sullivan, Jette Kernion, Robin Lambaria, Joe
Swanberg, Erik Jambor, Alex Orr, Alex Ferrari, Mark Potts, and
many, many others.
To all the filmmakers on the circuit whose questions and festival war
stories inspired this book.
To the tireless festival staffers and volunteers who make each event
possible and special in its own way.
To the film fans who sit in the dark and prove to me repeatedly that
there is such a thing as an “audience picture.”
To Roger Erik Tinch, for unwavering cheerleading, moral support,

and a kick-ass cover design.
To everyone who supported the initial Seed & Spark campaign to

begin work on this edition, and waited patiently for me to be done.
Especially: Amy Nicholson, Melanie Green, Lisa Trifone, Matthew J
Reynolds, Jon Gann, Jay Edwards, Sam Frazier, Jonathan Lisecki,
Kayley Viteo, Patricia Taylor, Erik Jambor, Katie Ewers, Jason Brown,
Timon Birkhofer, Ian Scott, Brendon Murphy, Rob Holland, Munich
Film Society, Christopher Escobar, Gary Meyer, Veronica Elliott,
Laura Moscatello, Jijo Jose, John Merriman, Bodine Boling, Scott
Hanson, Jody Arlington, Hillary Bolle, Melanie Addington, Christina
Reynolds, Jonathan Berkowitz, Emily Best, Nancy Thanki, Kathryn A
Pasternak, Stacey Davis, Robyn Hicks, Donald Guarisco, Sidewalk
Film Festival, Lina, Kristjan Knigge, Pamela Holland Councill, Ben &
Jyotika Alpi, Samuel Thomas, Charles H. Moore, Brantly Watts, Jeff
Salyer, Michael Ciuffini, Amy E Morrison, Darva Campbell, Eliaz
Rodriguez, David Rosen, Sheri Mann Stewart, Fred Ireland, Bennett

Leeds, Chris Hyams, Adam J Pitzler, David Fugett, Arthur Kanegis,
Nancy Kenny, and Diana Zuroshvili.
To Christina Holland for her enduring patience and support, to Amy

Morrison for loaning me that algebra book, to my extended family
for being awesome, and to Elizabeth and Margaret for daily
reminders that life exists beyond the motion picture.
Foreword
By Jarod Neece
Senior Film Programmer
South by Southwest (SXSW)
You made a film! Congrats! Now what? If you are looking for some
advice, a little educated wisdom and a healthy dose of real talk I am
here to tell you - you are in the right place.
10 years ago Chris Holland used his longtime knowledge of film

festivals along with collected stories and tips from Film Festival &
Industry Insiders to create the definitive handbook for filmmakers
looking to succeed at Film Festivals. 10 years later, a lot has changed
and a lot has stayed very much the same.
If I’ve learned anything in my almost 20 years working and

programming at South by Southwest (SXSW) is that the Filmmakers
who succeed are the ones who have a vision, take chances and put it
all on the line for their art. Making films that stand out is no easy
task and not everyone has a story worth telling. If you want to get
your film out into the world and to find your audience at film
festivals, ask yourself - was this film a passion project and a labor of
love? Did we put our heart and soul into the film? Was my idea
original and did I pull off my vision? If you said yes to one or more if
these we are off to a good start. If you had ulterior motives like
fame or money or you just made a copy of a film you loved – we may
not be in such a good place.
At SXSW alone we receive over 8000 film submissions each and

every year. 110 short films and 130 feature films make their way into
the lineup, which also means 7750 or those films are passed on for
one reason or another.

The main reason your film may not make the cut at any particular
festival is it's not what a certain festival is looking for or it is not the
right fit for that particular fest. With hundreds of festivals in North
America alone the numbers are both daunting and in your favor.
Knowing insider tips on when and how to submit to festivals,

creating the correct materials, and following best practices will help
get your foot in the door. Following the advice in Chris’ book on
promotional materials, building your fan base, and attending
festivals will help you stand out once you are at your festival
premiere.
As you will soon find out, there is no one way to make a film and get
it seen at festivals and everyone will have a different version of
success. But, with this book, a lot of hard work, and a determination
to find your audience you are well on your way to that Film Festival
Premiere screening!
Break legs!
- Jarod Neece
Chapter 1 - Before You Submit
It All Starts With a Great Film
Let’s begin with the tough love: all the tips and tricks in this book
won’t amount to a hill of beans if you’ve made a lousy film.
Statistically speaking, chances are good that you have made a movie
that is not destined to be this year’s darling at Sundance. This is not
to say, however, that all is lost if you haven’t made the next Little
Miss Sunshine. The festival field is wide enough and adventurous
enough that most competently made pictures eventually find a home
at one festival or another, though usually through much trial and
error and a lot of money in submission fees. The aim of Film Festival
Secrets is to limit those mistakes, but there’s only so much to be done
with a movie that no one wants to watch.
Every year I field dozens of emails from filmmakers who want to

know if the festival I work for will accept an “updated” version of
their film. Sometimes the changes consist of sweetened sound or
color correction, but sometimes the film has been completely
revamped because the filmmaker finally realized the perfect edits to
fix the third act.
Which of course raises the question: if you knew the third act wasn’t
quite right, why did you start sending the film to festivals?
The underlying question of course, is: why do so many filmmakers

(who presumably love movies and have the innate taste to tell the
good from the bad) submit substandard work to festivals?
Impatience is usually the answer to such questions. We want so

much to get to the next step in the process, to get the gratification of
an audience’s appreciation, that we rush something out before it’s
ready.
Chapter 1: Before You Submit 19

Yes, it requires patience to really finish a film and then cast a critical
eye on your own work. But if you haven’t made a picture that is at
least remarkable, an entire mountain of advice won’t give you a
better festival run.
What this means is that you need to take a good, hard look at your
film. Are you sure that you want to spend a year or more of your life
convincing the world’s most jaded audiences (festival screening
committees) that your work deserves to play to a festival audience?
These tips will help in evaluating your film’s readiness for the
festival circuit.
- Private test screenings with objective feedback are a crucial

component in evaluating your film’s quality. Test screenings need to
happen when changes can still be made and you need to be open to
making those changes. Conduct as many of these screenings as you
can reasonably hold, and take steps to ensure that the audience’s
input is as objective as possible.
Don’t take your mom’s word for it! You need to hear some approval of
your film from people who don’t know you. You may discover that
your picture needs just a few tweaks or that you’re in for a serious re-
edit. Either way give yourself time to accomplish what needs to be
done.
You’ll need a venue, projection & sound equipment, and an

audience, all of which you can probably get on the cheap with the
right amount of favor-trading and begging. Watching an audience
respond to your film will be worth it (no festival acceptance
necessary!), and getting their instant feedback is nice too. If you’re
not sure what questions you should be asking your audience, you
can download a sample test screening form at
filmfestivalsecrets.com/screeningform

- There are a number of common filmmaking mistakes that will
almost guarantee your rejection from the film festivals to whom you
submit. Chief among these:
• an unremarkable story
• hackneyed dialogue
• poor sound
• a lengthy running time
• inappropriate style for the festival
• bad acting
Your test screenings should help you determine if your picture needs
adjustment in any of these areas.
- Do you have the rights to the music in your movie? The failure to
clear rights to music can not only damage your distribution
prospects, but it can also prevent your film from playing at festivals.
Festivals don’t always check up on rights clearances but most of
them do at least mention it in their submissions/exhibition
paperwork. Some ask you to sign an agreement confirming that your
film violates no copyrights. Hire a music supervisor or make changes
to your film’s score if necessary. If you’re still confused about where
you stand with a particular piece of music, a legal representative may
be necessary.
- How much time have you spent thinking about your film’s
marketing? When film festivals select films, they’re also picking out
short-term business partners. If your film has no web presence, no
poster, and no trailer, festival programmers will think you’re not
taking the process seriously and they’ll move on to someone who
made a great film and great marketing elements to promote that film.

(And no, a Facebook page doesn’t count, for reasons we’ll get into
later.)
Short Films: How Long is Too Long?
One of the most common questions asked by the makers of short

films is: how long should my short film be? Every film should be
only as long as is required to tell the story, but the length of a short is
a crucial element in its chances for being programmed, and in
general the shorter the better.
Most festival programmers I’ve talked with say that anything over 20
minutes is regarded with some skepticism. Not because there aren’t
subjects that don’t fit into that running time, but because the
overwhelming majority of “short films” that run that long simply
could have been edited down to something leaner while delivering
the same value.
If you can get down under ten minutes you’re in prime festival
territory, but your editing choices should be made for the economy of
storytelling, not simply for improving your festival screening
chances.

A Checklist for Art Film Viewing
Festival screeners have seen hundreds upon hundreds of

independent films, most of them by young, first-time filmmakers
who have made a lot of the same minor mistakes. My friend Linda
(who screens films for a festival she’d rather not identify here) loves
independent films, but after seeing a significant number she wrote
this “Checklist for Art Film Viewing,” where “Art Film” is not a
complimentary term. If your film has some combination of these
rookie moves, you run the risk of rejection – or at least not being
taken very seriously. Below is Linda’s original list, with a few
editorial comments by festival staffers included in italics.
This is necessarily an incomplete list, but after two or three

checked boxes you know you are onto something.
Someone is rudely awakened by an alarm or outside noise or

knocking. Preferably the person is twenty-something and looks like
they have shouldered the world’s troubles…or just drunk too much
last night. Sometimes the film goes on to chronicle the subject’s entire
morning routine – a cliché that simply should be skipped most of the time.
- Someone says ‘shut the fuck up.’
- People walk down a sidewalk with a backdrop of colorful graffiti.
- A scene in a convenience store switches to security camera footage.

Same goes for waiting rooms, prison cells, etc.

- Someone sits at a bar smoking and drinking shots or martinis while
a worldly-wise bartender waits on them. Extra points if the bartender is
wiping down the bar with a rag.
- Someone points a gun at someone. Preferably while saying ‘shut the

fuck up.’
- Someone takes a leak. Preferably outdoors. Points if urine stream

goes astray.
- Someone answers a phone only to be hung up on.
- Someone tosses a portable phone or cell phone in disgust at the call

received. Points for throwing it out the window of a moving car.
- A profound quote is displayed on the screen.
- Someone takes a shower or brushes teeth. Preferably while

someone else uses the toilet. Someone vomits, particularly as a precursor
to finding out she is pregnant.
- Camera pans up into trees to denote passing of time or space.
- Camera pans down to shoes to denote passing of time or space.

Preferably shoes are Chuck Taylors.
- We realize it was all a dream.
- Someone goes to a party only to retreat outside in a funk while

everyone else gets completely drunk.
- Someone tries on different outfits in front of a mirror while also

trying out dance moves for the party to come.

- Someone sits in a cube farm pretending to work. Points for abuse of
office supplies.
Linda’s list was written in the spirit of fun but these are all tropes
I’ve seen hundreds of times in movies submitted to film festivals.
You probably recognize a few. If you find yourself using any one of
them, stop for a second and think – is it really necessary?
“As a film festival programmer and a former film festival director,

I’ve seen every single variation on the 50’s musical, the Woody Allen-
esque rom-com, or the Tarantino style crime caper,” says Saskia
Wilson-Brown, former director of the Silver Lake Film Festival. “I’ve
seen 500 gritty-voiced cigarette-smoking leading men with a
mysterious past, and even more film noir styled, tough-talking female
leads. I am always thrilled to see a story or a character that is not
readily accessible [at your local video outlet/streaming channel] .”
Often the tried-and-true has been re-tried ad nauseam, to lesser effect.

In other words: unless you’re working within a specific genre (e.g. a
zombie flick), do not be derivative or overly self-referential. Adding
your voice to that particular chorus does not add to the art form.
There is no point.”
Bottom line: film festivals look for new voices with new things to
say. Try to make a film that is remarkable enough to compel a viewer
to call a friend and say “you have got to see this.”
This might sound impossible, but new works show up at festivals

every year that do just that. Yours can be one of them.

What Are Your Goals?
Before you plunge headlong into the festival circuit with only a
vague idea of what you and your film might gain from the
experience, it helps to identify your goals both for yourself and for
your film. All of the following benefits are available from festivals,
but only some of them may be of interest to you.
- “Traditional” Distribution: Though harder than ever to attain these

days, distribution is the holy grail of filmmakers at festivals. The
festival circuit has traditionally been a marketplace for distributors
looking for material, though the statistics have always been grim.
Whether your film is purchased at a festival or finds its audience
sometime afterwards, a successful festival run is often an essential
first step in proving your film’s worth.
- Audience building: Whether you find a distribution company to

handle your film or you decide to distribute it yourself, you need to
connect to your film’s audience. Film festivals offer the opportunity
to meet new fans face-to-face. While you’re there, collect email
addresses so you can stay in touch.
- Networking. Festivals provide an unparalleled opportunity to

make those crucial connections that may eventually sell your film.
This is also a chance to meet your contemporaries, some of whom
may be able to help you in the future. Festivals are inhabited by
people inspired by films. Whether they are in the industry or not,
meeting those people (especially those who like your work) can be
invigorating after too many months in the editing bay.
- Exhibition. You didn’t make your film to hide it in a closet – you

wanted it to be seen! Festival audiences contain the most
appreciative and knowledgeable viewers out there. For many

How do I find festivals? Is there a list of all the film festivals in the
world?
As far as I know no such canonical list exists, but there are lots of people who
have tried. Typing “film festival” into the nearest internet search field should
give you more results than you can handle, but a more organized list is of
course a handy thing. Here are some resources that should help.
FilmFreeway (FilmFreeway.com) - many a fi lmmaker’s fi rst stop on the

festival circuit, with the largest selection of festival listings anywhere. See
more about FilmFreeway in chapter 2.
indieWIRE (indiewire.com) publishes articles of interest for those dealing

with fi lm festivals and indie fi lm distribution.
MovieMaker Magazine (moviemaker.com) regularly features lists of the

festivals it considers to be “worth the entry fee.”
Filmmaker Magazine (filmmakermagazine.com) reviews festivals regularly

and occasionally publishes lists of their favorites.
You may also have noticed the Directory of Notable Festivals at the end of this
book – my attempt to provide a resource for filmmakers looking for reliable
events.
pictures, the festival run is the de facto theatrical distribution. Often

it’s the only chance you’ll have to see a live audience react to your
film. Don’t underestimate the value of this experience.
- Cash prizes and prize packages. It’s common for festivals to offer
cash prizes for the best work of the season. A handful of such prizes
can help pay off those credit cards or at least defray your travel
expenses. Other festivals get sponsors to kick in prize packages
worth more than the cash prizes. I’ve seen lavish giveaways like
laptops and more modest prize packages like gift certificates.
Regardless of the award’s size, none of the filmmakers seemed sorry
to receive them.

- Awards of recognition. Even if there’s no cash involved, festival
awards are a nice way to draw attention to your film. More media
coverage is given to award winners and you can draw future festival
audiences to your film with some laurel wreaths on your poster. Plus:
awards help you build confidence in your own work and provide
credibility that will help your career beyond the film at hand.
- Learning opportunities. Many festivals feature panels and

seminars in addition to their film programming. Take advantage of
your complimentary badge and add to your filmmaking knowledge
by sitting in on a few talks. Festivals are also a great place to learn
from others. When you see the ways that your fellow filmmakers
market their work and talk about making their movies, you can learn
from their example.
- Media coverage. Festivals are covered by local and industry press

alike. The amount of coverage is naturally proportional to the size
and prestige of the festival, but with the right strategy and
persistence you can build a nice portfolio of press clippings. Reviews
can make or break a film, but as a filmmaker you definitely want as
many reviews as you can get.
- Parties. Not only are these great fun, they can be great places to
make connections. In terms of networking, parties are where the
action is at any film festival. If you’re a starving filmmaker, parties
are your refueling station.
- Cool movies. There’s no better place than a film festival to see the
new, weird, and wonderful in cinema. Enjoy the privileges of your
filmmaker’s pass and take in a few movies. There is a difference
between being an audience member and truly being a part of the
festival; it’s an experience you should embrace as much as possible.
You can grow support for your own film by attending others’ and

getting to know the filmmakers afterwards. You may even bump into
your new friends at later festivals. (This happens more often than
you’d think.)
- Travel. If you’re lucky, the festival will fly you in or put you up. If
you’re smart, you will have put a line item for festival travel in your
film’s budget. Either way, your film’s stint at a faraway film festival
is a great excuse to see another town or even another continent.
Once you know which benefits of the festival circuit are most
important to you, prioritize them and keep them in mind when
making other decisions.
Your goals on the festival circuit should also be a reflection of your

overall aims for the film. There are of course the vague hopes for
your picture to be a “success,” but it’s important to define what
success looks like.
• Are you looking for a distributor to purchase your film’s

rights and get it into theaters and retail stores?
• Are you looking for paid work in the indie or studio film
industry?
• Is it more important that your film’s message be seen by as
many people as possible?
• Do you want to expand your short into a feature?
• Are you looking for talented collaborators with whom to work
on future projects?
The festival circuit can be the right path for all of these destinations,
but the individual festivals you might want to play and what you do
once you arrive at them could vary greatly based on your particular
ambitions.

How Festivals Work
Now that you’ve thought long and hard about your film and what
you want from the festival circuit, let’s talk in very general terms
about the way that film festivals work.
(If this section seems familiar to you, that’s because it is adapted

from 7 Days to a Film Festival Strategy, an online course you can find
at filmfestivalsecrets.com/strategy .)
The Call for Entries
From the perspective of a filmmaker, the festival process begins with

the call for entries. In reality there have been months of preparation
leading up to the call — analysis of the previous festival’s successes
and failures, reworking of the festival procedures and format, the
courting of sponsors, and more.
Filmmakers responding to the call for entries fill out the festival’s
submission form, pay a submission fee (at this writing, typical fees
This is where the previous warning about festivals with odd criteria for short films
balances out. There are a number of “shorts only” festivals, some of which are
quite prestigious. Attending these fests can be a refreshing change for the
producers of short pictures who generally live in the shadows of the feature
filmmakers at other festivals.
Shorts-only festivals like Hollyshorts and DC Shorts offer first-class-citizen status

to their visiting filmmakers (because hey, everyone at the fest made a short), but
they also offer a larger appetite for films that might not find open arms at other
festivals. Shorts aren’t competing for a mere handful of slots at 3 or 4 shorts
programs over the course of a festival; they’re the main event. Even if there isn’t
room for everyone, there’s room for a helluva lot more.

anywhere from $20 – $50 and sometimes more depending on the
deadline), and send one or more copies of their film to the festival for
consideration.
As the entries come into the festival, they are sorted by category and
catalogued for review. The screening process usually begins as soon
as the first films start to trickle in and really gets going as the
deadlines approach.
The Screening Process
Depending on the size of the festival staff and the volume of

submissions every film may be viewed by either a staff member or a
team of pre-screeners. These pre-screeners are usually volunteers, but
in the case of larger festivals like Sundance, this can be a team of paid
professionals. Each film is viewed by one or more of these pre-
screeners (the better festivals make sure each film is viewed at least
twice) and evaluated by a standard set of criteria.
As the festival dates draw near, the programming team sets aside the
best-reviewed films for deliberation and after much internal
agonizing, lobbying, and the occasional cage match final decisions
are made.
Once the festival decides which films to show, the programming

team notifies each filmmaker of their acceptance or rejection. As with
so many other things in life, the happy news for those films accepted
is often delivered first and by personal contact; rejections are usually
sent en masse and by form letter.

After this comes a flurry of communication and negotiations as
filmmakers accept their placement at the film festival or, more rarely,
withdraw from the festival.
(Believe it or not, there are legitimate reasons not to show your film at
a festival after you’ve been accepted. See chapter 4 for more on this.)

It’s Time to Get Things Started
With a program set, the festival staff locks down screening times and
puts the finishing touches on the thousands of details that go into a
film festival: venues, travel arrangements, the technicalities of
projection, print trafficking, party logistics, transportation, the
creation of printed and online program guides, volunteers, ticketing,
marketing, catering, media relations, and more.
Film festivals have branched out from the mere exhibition of movies,
offering a bewildering array of parties, panels, speakers, trade shows,
virtual reality exhibits, seminars, concerts, live animal acts, and other
associated events at a multitude of venues.
In the weeks leading up to the festival, the festival staff and

filmmakers ramp up their marketing efforts, publishing press
releases and sending screeners to local and industry media. Larger
festivals often receive preview and on-site coverage from industry
publications, but even small festivals will get some coverage from the
local press.
One important factor to keep in mind is that film festivals live and
die by sponsor contributions and grants. (Ticket sales and
submissions fees typically represent less than a third of a festival’s
cash revenue.) Sponsors and grant committees want to see full
theaters, so many of the festival’s decisions must be made with an
eye on what will attract large audiences.
It would be lovely to say that film festivals are solely about the art
form and the championship of emerging filmmakers, but reality
intrudes.

As the festival approaches, it’s all about selling tickets and putting
butts in seats, so the marketing department works overtime to
promote the festival program. Savvy filmmakers will start their own
marketing campaigns in the festival city, distributing posters and
handbills at establishments near the festival venue and seeking
coverage from community media to lure film fans to their screenings.
This is often the most nerve-wracking time for both filmmakers and
festival staff — making sure everything is going to go off without a
hitch (it rarely does) and hollering at the top of their metaphorical
and actual lungs to be heard in a world whose collective attention is
perpetually fleeting.
Eventually those final days tick down and it’s time for the opening
night curtain. Filmmakers fly in with their marketing materials in
hand, business cards in their pockets, and stars in their eyes. And
why shouldn’t they? Years of work led up to this moment, little of it
glamorous. For many of these no-longer-aspiring cast and crew
members, this is the first significant recognition of the merit of their
work from someone other than their family and friends.
Reality Check
This is the point at which filmmaker expectations of a film festival

meet reality and disappointment is bound to occur. Relatively few
films actually play the well-funded festivals that can afford to fly
their contestants in and put them up in lavish hotels; even fewer
have the cachet to sell out every film they program.
The anticipation of a world premiere – with a packed house and a

smiling acquisition exec in the crowd – collides with the truth.
Audiences can be maddeningly elusive, acquisition execs even more

so, and film festivals are filled with filmmakers just like you —
hungry, talented, and willing to work, but playing in an ever more
crowded field.
This is not to say that film festivals aren’t worth your time. Quite the
opposite!
In the case of many independent films, festivals act as the theatrical

tour for those films not destined to achieve theatrical distribution.
“Thinking of it as a tour is a great mindset, and your goal is to blow

it out at every stop. Promote like a madman,” says Mark Potts,
festival veteran and director of films like Spaghettiman and Cinema
Six. “Find ways to talk to people around the city before your film
plays. In Oxford (Mississippi), my team and I spoke to a film class
and a number of the students showed up at the screening that night.
Pass out fliers, and don’t be afraid to be a bit of a promotional whore.
My gang and I aren’t. Maybe we annoy some of the other filmmakers
because we see the festival circuit as work. It’s fun work, but you
gotta sell the film and yourself. Maybe someone thinks your film
sounds weird, but if they like you, they’ll show up.”
Film festivals are also the front lines of quality control on the massive
glut of independent movies made each year. Without the teams of
film festival screeners wading through the sub-standard pictures and
heralding the gems that appear, distributors and audiences would
have an even harder time finding those unknown filmmakers whose
work deserves to be seen.
Filmmakers benefit from the festival process even more than the
audiences. Not only do they get to see the amazing work of their
peers, but they also have a place to showcase their own movies, find

their audiences, garner publicity, and — every so often — get a real
lead on some financial remuneration for their work.
So the question remains: where does your film fit into the festival
landscape? How do you narrow the field and pick likely candidates
for your film?
Identify Your Target Festivals
With more than 1000 “English-speaking” festivals in North America

and Europe and an estimated 5000 festivals worldwide, the array of
choices faced by the typical filmmaker is dizzying. For the purposes
of organizing your submissions strategy, we’re going to view the
festival circuit as a pyramid with 4 tiers.

This is for illustration only and not to be taken as gospel — the exact
placement of any individual festival is a matter of opinion and your
estimation of a festival may bump it up or down the pyramid as it
suits your needs. The pyramid structure, however, helps you to
visualize the path your film will ideally take through the festival
circuit: premiering at the top with a small number of submissions to
the most beneficial festivals for your film and working your way
down through the tiers with more screenings at a wider number of
festivals with less visibility.
Tier One
There is a small list of “top tier” festivals where most filmmakers will
want to start, though only a handful of the thousands of annual
entrants actually play those festivals. The definition of “top tier” is
subjective, though few would dispute the inclusion of festivals like
Sundance, Toronto, South by Southwest (SXSW), or Cannes.
If your film falls into a category of specialty interest, however, your

top tier festivals may look a bit different. Got a horror flick on your
hands? Maybe Sitges or Fantastic Fest is where you want to start.
Frameline is one of the top gay & lesbian festivals out there and
could be the right launching pad for your transgender self-discovery
film. Documentary filmmakers may well want to start with a docs-
only festival their first time out, so the top tier of that pyramid might
well be IDFA, Hot Docs, or AFI Docs. The important thing to
remember is that you’re only likely to play a handful of the top tier
mainstream festivals if any at all, so don’t shoot below the mark and
then expect to play a more prestigious festival later.

(See the section on premieres later in this chapter for more on the
relative importance of premiere status for feature-length films vs
shorts.)
Tier Two
On the second tier of your festival pyramid you should list the larger
regional festivals you’d like to play once your film has had its big
premiere and a shot at one or two other top tier fests. This may well
include fests like the Austin Film Festival, the Atlanta Film Festival,
or the Hawaii Film Festival.
Any one of these could be considered a top-tier fest for your film, but
in general they are not considered to have quite the prestige of the
festivals I mentioned in Tier One above. Also occupying the second
tier are small-but-significant events like the Ann Arbor Film Festival
and the Sidewalk Moving Pictures Festival which by virtue of their
longevity, entrepreneurial spirit, or industry cachet have influence
beyond their modest audience numbers.
Such “second-tier” festivals can be just as competitive as the top-tier

fests. However, because festivals at this level don’t quite have the
combination of age, prestige, or funding as the aforementioned top-
tier events, they tend to see fewer submissions. Such organizations
are therefore hungry for world and national premieres of great
pictures. (Again, see the section on premieres later in this chapter.)
Premieres are the stuff of which glitzy events and organizational

prestige are made, so every festival wants to prove its worth by
“discovering” a handful of films that haven’t been seen previously
anywhere else. The popular wisdom in filmmaking is to treat your

film’s world premiere as you would its virginity – you can only give
it away once. (Though there are creative ways around that, as we’ll
discuss later.)
Another factor that may affect your list of festival prospects is the
fact that some festivals are accredited by the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts & Sciences, which means the winners of their short film
competitions become qualified for consideration to win an Academy
Award. If you’re the proud creator of a short film you want to
identify these festivals and put them high on your list of places to
submit. You can always find the latest list at the Academy’s web site,
oscars.org. Make sure to check the rules of eligibility; they are quite
strict and it would be a shame to accidentally become ineligible.
As a counterpoint, I should mention that Oscar-qualifying festivals

are extremely competitive. With few other sources of information
about the relative quality of film festivals out there, many filmmakers
use the Oscar list as their only gauge of quality and the result is a
deluge of submissions to these lucky few fests. The discriminating
filmmaker will seek out festivals of good reputation that lack the
Academy label – and are therefore not swamped with film
submissions.
Tier Three
Your third tier is where things start to get a bit murky. Generally
speaking, the festivals on your third tier should be less well-known
festivals that have been around for a while and that serve their
regional audiences well. These festivals can be the most fun;
depending on their funding and philosophy they may treat their
filmmakers more lavishly (and with more respect) than some of the
top-tier fests.

The smaller, more intimate feel of such events can make them the
best experiences you’ll have on the festival circuit – you’ll have more
time to connect with your fellow filmmakers and you’ll get more face
time with the festival staff.
Once your film has made a splash at your top tier fests and made a
name for itself on the second tier, you should find yourself playing a
number of third-tier festivals. Not that smaller festivals are
necessarily easier to get into, since they often have fewer screening
slots, but it can be easier to win awards at this level than higher up in
the circuit.
What About Festivals With Free Submissions?
At some point you’re going to encounter festivals that offer a chance to submit
your film with no associated fee. With a few exceptions, these festivals break
down into five categories:
• Festivals with a need for very narrow niche content. (It’s hard enough to
find short films about entomology. No need to discourage the
filmmakers further with a submission fee.)
• Young and/or small festivals that need content and don’t get enough to
require them to use a fee as a gate-keeper. (Give us your films, we
need to keep our programmers busy!)
• Established festivals exploring new territory or offering a boon to a
particular sub-set of submitters. (We’ve never programmed VR work
before. Let’s see how this goes.)
• Organizations with an ulterior motive. (We really want your email
address so we can sell you expensive camera equipment.)
• Festivals with government funding or some other way to subsidize
submissions fees.
It’s perfectly OK to submit to any of these festivals, just understand what you’re
getting for your not-money – including the possibility that you’ll end up on a
bunch of mailing lists.

Tier Four
Fourth tier fests are young fests without much reputation or

established festivals with poor reputations. There’s not much reason
to spend a lot of money pursuing these festivals — if the fourth tier
fests are all you can get into then you’re probably not going to get
much out of the festival circuit anyway.
If your film has had a good run on the top three tiers and you feel
there’s something to be gained by continuing to play at even the
smallest festivals, by all means accept those invitations and submit to
the festivals that have meaning to you.
Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference between third- and

fourth-tier festivals; there are very young festivals that put on
impressively professional events and there are long-standing fests
that barely keep it together from year to year. Depending on
variables like funding and staff turnover, an individual festival can
bounce between tier three and four annually. If you find yourself
playing at a disorganized event, try not to take it too seriously and
get what you can out of the experience. (We’ll cover how to handle
such situations in chapter 6.)
You never know what opportunities will arise from attending any
given festival, so don’t forget to budget for travel to some of the
smaller events and be sure to submit to (or at least make contact
with) all of the festivals within easy driving range. This is one reason
that the directory at the end of this book is organized by location.

Premieres
The concept of premieres will come up a lot during your festival run.
For some festivals it is of no consequence and for others it is a very
big deal. This is a much more important concept for feature
filmmakers than it is for shorts but you should always bear in mind
your film’s premiere status in any territory and what that might
mean for its acceptance potential at any given festival.
Put simply, a premiere is the first time a film plays for the public in a
particular place. The hierarchy looks something like this:
• World premiere
• Continental premiere
• National Premiere
• Regional Premiere (within a region of the country, such as the
Northwestern United States)
• State Premiere (for the U.S.)
• City Premiere
The higher a premiere is on this list, the more prestigious it is – in

other words, the more a festival can lay claim to having “discovered”
you and your film. Festival organizers who care about these things
(mostly on the upper end of the pyramid) feel some pressure to
cultivate new voices in film in addition to filling seats. The industry
(for right or wrong) places a lot of emphasis on who recognizes
emerging artists first.
If your film has already shown at a festival in a particular city, it’s

unlikely that another festival in that same town will show it. Keep
this in mind when submitting.

The festival year is divided into two basic seasons: spring and fall. Most
festivals steer clear of January to make way for Sundance, then ramp up
slowly into an explosion of festivals in mid-March, April, and May.
In summer things slow down with only a few major festivals taking place, such
as the Seattle International Film Festival.
In mid-August things heat up again leading up to October, the most crowded

month of film festivals by far.
After Halloween, festivals dwindle, with AFI Fest rounding out the festival year
in November.
Keep this in mind as you plot out your submissions. If you wait until January to
start submitting, you will miss many of the deadlines for spring festivals. Cast
your eye towards events in the fall.
For features, your premiere is of the utmost importance. Where your

film premieres is very likely to set the bar for its entire festival run.
Your film may play other festivals of that same tier or lower, but very
rarely will you see a feature film move up to higher tiers. Festival
organizers are very likely to research the festivals a feature film has
played prior to their own and make decisions accordingly.
Short films, on the other hand, can start out at very low tiers and
work their way up to higher tiers easily, bouncing up and down the
pyramid without consequence. There are certainly festival
programmers who take the premiere status of a short film into
consideration when making their decisions, but it’s easier for a short
film’s quality to outweigh its premiere status in such cases than it
would be for a feature.
Don’t be afraid to highlight the film’s premiere status in your film’s

application to the festival and think carefully about what each
screening you hold does to the film’s premiere status. In particular,
it’s important that if you hold a “friends & family” screening before
your festival debut, do not call it the world premiere. It’s a “sneak

preview” or a “private advance” or whatever else you want to call it
– just not the premiere. Similarly, filmmakers have played festivals
while still preserving their “world premiere” status by allowing a
festival to show their picture as a “work in progress” screening. This
is kind of a shifty thing to do but it works.
A final word: A premiere is important, but it is not the only thing you
have to offer to festivals. Some programmers couldn’t care less about
premieres – they want films that will bring the audience in droves.
“I’ve had conversations about premieres with other programmers, asking

'what's the point of world premiering a so-so film when you could offer a
really great festival platform to an amazing film that had already screened at
maybe one or two other festivals?' From my perspective, it's really about the
movie and the story and the film and the filmmaker. “
- J. Brad Wilke, Artistic Director, Portland Film Festival
Reality Check Part Two
Only a select handful of first-time filmmakers break into one of the

top-tier festivals. The overwhelming majority are turned away. Their
films premiere at less prestigious festivals and there’s no shame in
that.
On one hand, I would encourage new filmmakers to spare

themselves the expense and heartache of submitting to the top-tier
festivals by going straight for the second-tier fests where they are
more likely to find themselves welcome.
On the other hand, if you’re confident that your film is of the highest
caliber then skipping the top tier fests would leave you forever

wondering whether you could have made it. So by all means submit
to Sundance, but try not to take rejection personally. There’s lots of
room on the festival circuit and somewhere within it there’s a
receptive audience for your picture.
Filmmaker Scott D. Hanson (Parts) puts it this way:
“In talking to other filmmakers at festivals I have encountered the feeling

that places like Sundance and Toronto really are less for discovering talent
than a place where the most talented take their passion projects. Yes some are
first time directors, but they may have established careers as actors or
producers or editors. I think it is important to keep in mind that those
festivals are there to show the very best filmmaking they can (to even call it
independent is a stretch). Yes, some come from out of the blue and capture
gold, but that is winning the lottery. If winning the lottery is a filmmaker’s
career path they are in for a rough ride. “
Finding the Right Fit
Beyond what a film festival looks like at first glance – its relative size
and prestige – there are many other factors that may push a
particular festival up or down on your film’s pyramid. Scout out
your target festival’s web site and see what you can learn about the
things that may make it more or less appropriate for you. Such
factors include:
- Location, location, location. Some festivals look kindly on local

filmmakers (they usually bring in local audiences), so if there’s a
festival nearby you should definitely submit. (You’re going to want
to have your hometown premiere at some point.) If your film is of
local interest to a particular place you should target the festivals in

and around that region. Don’t forget to look for festivals in places
you’ve been meaning to visit, or where you have family or friends
who can put you up for free. (As previously mentioned, this is so
important that I organized the directory at the end of this book by
location. Use it to find festivals near you.)
- Your personal connections on the festival staff. If you personally

know people who work at film festivals, you should exploit those
connections – politely. Knowing someone on the inside is no
guarantee of acceptance but it gets you a lot further than a cold
submission.
There are some in the film industry who believe these connections
are the only thing that matters. “It’s not how good your film is, it’s
who you know or how many celebrities you have,” they might say.
Very few of these people ever sat in the chair of a festival

programmer. Programmers will tell you of the sinking feeling they
get when they have to say “no” to friends whose work didn’t make
the cut. They might also tell you how quickly an audience can
abandon a festival if it programs too many stinkers with famous
faces. Personal connections rarely overcome a film that isn’t good
enough, and even more rarely at quality festivals.
Programmers love to discover new talent. That’s what they signed

up for. It is as universal a truth as I’ve encountered.
“That moment of discovery is like trying a new food for the first
time,” says J. Brad Wilke, former programmer at the Seattle
International Film Festival and current Artistic Director of the
Portland Film Festival. “Maybe you're traveling somewhere and all
of a sudden you're like ‘Wow, this is amazing. You have to try this!’
That's what it is like to find a movie that has a distinctive and

interesting voice – maybe it's hilarious or maybe it's really dark – and
then saying ‘I found this movie out of a needle-in-a-haystack
situation and I want to share it with everyone at our festival.’ “
- Timing conflicts with other events. Is your leading man’s wedding

going to conflict with the film’s world premiere? You’d better check.
- Your budget. The festival submission fee - anywhere from $20 to

$100 per festival - is the bane of filmmakers everywhere. Festivals use
them as a barrier to keep every Joe with a camera from entering
willy-nilly, but the revenue does count for something so fees are
unlikely to go away any time soon. Check into the submissions fees
at your target festivals and make sure your budget can hack it.
- The festival’s past programming choices. This one can cut both
ways; you want to look for festivals that program films similar to
yours, but not too similar. If a programmer has a penchant for
screwball comedies or competition documentaries that may be
something you can use to your advantage. But if you’ve got a film
about motocross and they played a demolition derby doc the year
prior, the festival may not want to explore the same territory again so
soon. This includes special-interest festivals (or specialty sections
within festivals) with themes that match your film – children’s film,
outdoor/wildlife, human rights, etc.
Consider also your film’s tone – if it’s a scrappy first-time doc with a
great narrative but low commercial potential, it might be better
placed at a filmmaker-friendly festival like Slamdance instead of a
high-powered market like Toronto.
- Word of mouth. Filmmakers write about their experiences at film

festivals all the time — just do a quick web search for the festival’s
name and see what they’re saying. If you can’t find exactly what you

want to know, don’t be afraid to contact another filmmaker
personally to ask their opinion of the overall experience at that
festival.
- Scams. Fortunately these are few and far between, but festival
scams do exist. Some “festivals” charge exorbitant entry fees or make
extravagant promises about their ability to connect you with a
distributor. Others give away hundreds of “awards” annually with
an eye towards selling the winners handsome trophies for their
mantelpieces. (If their list of award winners is delivered in a
spreadsheet, think twice.) Though there may be some legitimate
screenings involved with events like these, they are not legitimate
festivals and distributors know the difference. Don’t waste your
money; be sure to check out festivals that seem too good to be true.
Need more in-depth advice about selecting festivals for your film?
Listen to this 11-minute episode of the Film Festival Secrets podcast,
in which I explain some easy ways to zero in on the right festivals for
you out of the thousands of choices out there.
filmfestivalsecrets.com/selection
Set Your Timeline and Fill Your Pyramid
Creating a festival submissions strategy, as with comedy, is largely a

matter of timing. The first rule: Don’t rush production to meet a
festival deadline. The film is done when it’s done, and there are
plenty of festivals to submit to once that happens. There’s always the
temptation to submit a rough cut of your movie and plenty of
filmmakers do, but in most cases those filmmakers are doing

themselves and their work a disservice. If you miss the deadline for a
particular top-tier fest there are always more following right behind.
This is one of the most important things to keep in mind as you

approach the festival circuit: unless it has material that is timely in
the extreme (such as the discussion of an impending election), your
film doesn’t have an expiration date until you start submitting. In
most cases the only pressure to get your film “out there” comes from
your own brain. Suppress the desire to move on to the next stage of
the process and make sure your film is completely finished before
you start spending money on festival submissions.
With your completed film in hand, envision the ideal timeline for
your film’s world premiere and subsequent festival run. Compare
that to your knowledge of your own patience and tolerance for
rejection. For example, if you’ve completed your film in January but
you have your heart set on Sundance, you’re in for a long year of
waiting. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing – you could use the
extra time to test your film further or polish your marketing strategy
– but if you’re like most filmmakers, you’re anxious for audiences to
see your film sooner than that. Fortunately there are top tier festivals
year round. (See the sidebar on Festival Seasons for more on this.)
Festival deadlines are generally three months out from the events
themselves (sometimes longer) so a typical festival run might look
something like this:
1. Completed film submitted to several top tier fests (now)

2. Film accepted at first top tier fest (2-3 months out)
3. World premiere (3-4 months out)
4. Film accepted by another top tier fest (3-4 months out)

5. Film plays additional top-tier fest & submitted to second-tier
festivals ( 4 - 8 months out)
6. Film plays second-tier fests & invited/submitted to third-tier
fests (6 - 12 months out)
7. Film plays third & fourth-tier fests as invitations and occasional
submissions continue (12-24 months out)
Depending on your own determination to play a top-tier festival and

your patience, the time between steps 1 and 2 can be as long as a
year. I wouldn’t recommend waiting much longer than that. If you’ve
submitted to all of your top-tier festivals in a calendar year and been
turned down uniformly, it’s time to face facts and lower your sights.
In extreme circumstances the entire process can take as much as three

years, especially if you’re the kind of person determined to get every
last bit of mileage out of the festival circuit. As your film reaches the
bottom of the festival pyramid it can and should be playing multiple
small festivals at once, hopefully picking up some awards along the
way and giving you the excuse to travel in the name of networking.
Of course the ultimate decision of when to stop is yours.
(You can read more about how to know when it’s time to stop
submitting here: filmfestivalsecrets.com/whentostop )
The festival submissions process is often likened to applying to

college. Just as every student is different, so too is every film and
likewise the submissions strategy for each film. Gabe Wardell, former
executive director of the Atlanta Film Festival, encourages
filmmakers to submit to first- and second-tier festivals
simultaneously, similar to applying to a variety of colleges instead of
just the Ivy League. (I suggest starting step 5 about 4 months in – that
way you’re not starting from scratch with second-tier fests a full year
after your first submission.) Doing so gives you more options in the

short term, especially if you take second-tier festivals seriously – and
you should.
Also, keep in mind that the “Ivy League” is not for everyone. Finding
the right fit for your film should be the priority of a thoughtful
filmmaker. Consider the impact of debuting your feature in
competition at the Denver Film Festival instead of being one more
film in a crowd at South by Southwest. A red carpet opening night
world premiere at a regional fest is an unrivaled experience that
could trump a lost-in-the-shuffle screening at a larger event.
Just as your film’s festival run can be damaged by rushing the

process, so too can you be hurt by waiting too long to premiere your
film once the submissions process begins.
“Consider the damage done by waiting,” says Wardell. “Film

festivals don’t exist in a vacuum; we generally know what films are
making the rounds. It can easily become apparent that your picture
has been sitting around doing nothing because you held out for a
year submitting to top tier festivals. Then you have to convince
everyone else that your year-old film is still fresh just as the next
bumper crop is arriving. By playing too close to the vest, you end up
looking desperate or arrogant or both. Shopping your film around to
a variety of festivals keeps your options open.”
Alternate Views
There is a school of thought that advocates restricting a film’s festival

run to only a few large festivals before yanking it from the circuit.
The theory is that making a big splash at a handful of industry-heavy
events is a good thing, but that distributors will view a film as being
“overplayed” if it makes a full festival run. Not only is this a narrow-

minded view of the moviegoing public (though perhaps a fair
estimation of the way some acquisition execs think), it can also be a
frustrating experience for the filmmaker.
Do you really want to labor over a film and then rob yourself of the
only theatrical screenings you’re likely to see? I’ve known films that
received heaps of buzz upon their initial premiere but then vanished
behind a curtain of distribution strategy initiated by a producer’s
representative, laying dormant for years before finally surfacing later
for sale on video. From the outside it doesn’t look like much fun.
There may be some merit to this strategy – if you have produced a

film with a large budget and name actors (or a documentary with
similarly huge commercial potential) and you already have a sales
agent involved. It’s hard to predict what will make a film attractive
to any particular distributor, so perhaps limiting the festival play on
a film with high commercial potential is a smart move. Even so it
seems a shame to put your film on a shelf so quickly. Do-it-yourself
filmmakers should aim for as much festival play as possible until
(and sometimes even after) a distributor becomes seriously involved.
Another strategy made possible by (relatively) new technology and

collapsing distribution windows is the big splash followed by an
immediate release on digital platforms (and, more rarely, in theaters).
This is risky to execute on your own – an immediate release means
other festivals won’t touch you – but more often a partner like
Amazon or Netflix is involved.
I don’t talk about distribution much in these pages – that’s another

book – but there are a few words about the changing landscape of
distribution and how it affects festivals in chapter 7.

Fill In Your Pyramid
Now’s that you have some festivals targeted and a rough timeline in
mind, fill in the tiers of your pyramid with the events you’ve picked.
Don’t worry if it seems incomplete; this is an evolving document that
will change over time.
Get Organized
Grab a calendar and start marking it up with the deadlines you’ll

need to meet (find them on the festival web sites) and the actual
dates of the events themselves. It’s one thing to see a list of dates, but
on a calendar it will be easier to see the overall picture and spot
conflicts.
Since there will be lots of “paperwork” involved, it’s crucial to keep

good records. For you this might mean a simple spreadsheet into
which you type your submissions info, or go even older school with
a notebook. Look into some of the online collaboration tools where
you can easily keep detailed records and share them with others. For
the purposes of discussion I’ll refer to this information (however you
decide to store it) as your submissions notebook.
In your notebook, immediately enter the following:
• a copy of your preliminary festival pyramid

• the first set of festivals to which you plan to submit
• their deadlines
• the entry fees for each deadline (earlier deadlines have lower
fees)

• their festival dates
Leave room alongside each entry for more information; we’ll be

adding to it later.
Other things you may want to put in your notebook:
• Dollar amounts for your submissions fee and travel budgets.

Whether you have a firm ceiling on how much you’re willing
to spend on submissions and travel, it’s good to put some
numbers here to prepare yourself for the fact that money will
have to be spent.
• A list of the cast & crew you’ll want to bring along for the
world premiere.
• Contact info for each festival.
• Friends and family in the cities where your festivals take
place.
Prepare Your Festival Screener
The lingua franca of the festival world, at least as far as screening

copies goes, is the online screener. When it comes to hosting
platforms for these videos, the overwhelming favorite of festivals
and filmmakers alike is Vimeo. Other hosts are fine (many
submissions platforms have their own internal video hosting) but
they each have their strengths and weaknesses. Given that Vimeo is
free for most uses, I encourage you to explore it before you commit to
anything else.
Beyond your choice of video platform, consider the following rules

of thumb for your video output.

- Don’t send an unfinished cut of the film. Submit when your film is
in its picture-locked final state and looks and sounds reasonably
professional.
- That said, don’t worry about having every little I dotted and T
crossed. It’s expected that a few technical details may change or that
names may be added to the credits — so long as the basic cut of the
film doesn’t change.
- Don’t burn a watermark on your video that lasts for the entire
duration of the film. Paranoid about piracy? Pop your “property of
Joe’s Studio” watermark up for about ten seconds once every half-
hour and you’ll be covered — without annoying anyone.
- Protect the screener with a password. Festivals like to know that the
film is protected from public view this way. Some festivals will
disqualify a film if it is available for public consumption online, so
make sure your password is in place.
- Once you set that password, don’t change it unless absolutely

necessary. Few things are as frustrating to a festival programmer or
juror as the inability to see a film because the password doesn’t work.
Written in the description text around the video, you should include:
• The title of the film

• Category of submission (as defined by the festival)
• Running time in minutes
• Your name (identify yourself as the primary contact)
• Your e-mail address
• A short synopsis (100-300 words). Don’t give too much away.
A word about DVDs and other physical media:

In the first edition of the book, this entire section was about DVD
screeners. Those days are long gone. (And good riddance.)
There are some filmmakers who claim that physical media such as
DVDs or Blu-Rays are superior to online screeners for a variety of
reasons, but don’t be fooled. Even if you can find festivals that still
accept submissions on DVD, these days submitting your film on
plastic discs can only hinder a festival programmer’s efforts to
actually see your film.
Prepare Your Exhibition Copies
One of the aspects of screening that often escapes filmmakers until

they begin to submit is the exhibition format. Exhibition copies of
films (also referred to as “prints”) are generally higher resolution
versions more suited to projection on a giant screen. That means
bigger file sizes and therefore bigger headaches.
This most important piece of wisdom here is that you should

maintain as much control over your film’s digital assets as possible.
Don’t just hand it all over to your editor and expect that he or she
will always be available to export the film in the format you need at a
moment’s notice. Once the film is done insist on a copy of the editing
master (whether that’s in Adobe Premiere or Final Cut or whatever)
and make sure you know how to export the film yourself, or at least
have the raw materials to get someone else to do it for you if your
editor becomes unavailable.
The two most common formats in digital projection are the Digital
Cinema Package (DCP) and the many different flavors of digital

video file like MP4, MOV, ProRes and so on. (See below for more on
this alphabet soup.)
DCP
DCP is what commercial movie theaters use, and it’s becoming more
and more common at film festivals as their venues buy the expensive
equipment required to display it. DCP is as bulletproof as it gets
when it comes to digital projection. Once a DCP is created (and
usually stored on a hard drive of its own), it’s more or less plug-and-
play.
Commercial distributors guard their intellectual property with

encrypted DCPs and draconian encryption keys that allow projection
only on certain players at certain times, but unless you want the
headaches that go along with maintaining those keys, you’ll want a
simple, unencrypted DCP on a hard disk.
There are some open source tools that can help you export to DCP
from your editing software, but I highly recommend engaging a DCP
creation service to do it for you. It’s not a simple process and there
are lots of ways to do it incorrectly. Visit filmfestivalsecrets.com/dcp
for a list of DCP companies recommended to me by filmmakers and
festival directors.
Delivery: DCPs can be quite large in file size and are generally
delivered on specially-formatted hard disks, which are physically
shipped from place to place. As your film is quite likely to be shown
at more than one festival simultaneously, you’ll want to have at least
two of these made. If you’re hedging your bets, have one made with
a mastering company that will keep your project on file for at least 6
months so you can have additional copies made in short order.

Digital Video Files
In venues where DCP equipment is unavailable, the best substitute is

a computer hooked up to a digital projector. Such setups play video
files, usually MP4 files of some variety. There are dozens of variations
on the basic video file, each with their own numbers and confusing
abbreviations like ProRes and H.264, and every festival will likely
ask for some slightly different combination of output options based
on what their equipment can handle.
When a festival asks for specific output, it might be tempting to think

you could send them any old video file have on hand. That should be
close enough, right? Wrong.
If a file comes in that is of the wrong type, the festival’s technical

director might just perform the conversion to that festival’s format to
ensure that it will play on the festival’s projection device. If you
remove yourself from that equation, you can’t check the final file for
errors. Again, controlling your own digital assets is the best way to
know that you’ll have (or be able to generate) the proper video file
for the festivals you’ll encounter.
Delivery: Video files can be relatively large (a few GB for a short

film, 30 GB or more for a feature), so you can deliver them on thumb
drives, smallish hard disks, or even (for shorts) over the internet via
sharing services. In a pinch some festivals have been known to
download copies straight from Vimeo (though that is an option that
the creator must enable first).

Blu-Ray
The more intimate festivals may show films directly from a Blu-Ray
disc, but in my humble opinion the inherent instability of optical
media makes Blu-Rays a dicey proposition for projection in front of a
paying audience. No one cares if a Blu-Ray skips in their home
player, but with 300 people at a film festival? Not good. Still, there
will be festivals that use Blu-Ray exclusively.
In the event that you’re asked for Blu-Rays by a festival, send two
copies and a regular DVD if at all possible to guard against player
compatibility problems. (Better a backup copy that plays at standard
definition than a Blu-Ray copy that won’t play at all.)
Delivery: mail your discs in a cardboard box (instead of a padded

envelope!) to avoid inadvertent damage and pad well.
Don’t wait until you receive your first festival acceptance letter to
have your exhibition copies made. Festivals are on notoriously tight
schedules, and you’ll want time to check your exhibition copies for
video and sound problems before you ship it off to your first fest.
You might want to spend some time researching the average cost to
ship your prints across the country or to the countries of your
international target festivals so there aren’t any nasty surprises when
you do decide to ship it out.
The good news is that festivals generally pick up the cost and
responsibility of return shipping or, if you have upcoming festival
engagements, the shipping to your next festival destination. Don’t
assume that this is true, however – check with each festival to
confirm their shipping practices.

Exhibition copy checklist:
• Determine screening formats accepted at your target festivals

• Have multiple copies made as you can afford to do so
• Check all copies for video and sound problems
• Label the copies differently so you can tell them apart
• Investigate shipping costs
• Store the copies somewhere safe, dry, and cool until you need
them
• Retain control of your film’s master files so you can export to
different file formats as needed

Chapter One Review Checklist
- Nothing will affect your rate of festival acceptance like the quality
of your film, so be darn sure your film is ready.
- Hold private test screenings to help you find the flaws in your film.
Then fix them.
- Make sure you have clearances for the music in your film.
- Identify your goals for the festival circuit.
- Look up festivals to identify prospects and sort them into the four
tiers of your festival pyramid.
- Further sort your festival prospects by timing, location, budget,

content fit, etc.
- Be realistic about your festival circuit timeline.
- Start a festival submissions notebook and calendar.
- Prep your screening copy as an online screener and protect it with a

password.
- Prepare a DCP copy of your film and make sure you have your
film’s digital master files for easy export to other formats.

Chapter 2 - When You Submit
Chapter 2: When You Submit 63

Submissions Strategies
The mechanics of submitting to a film festival are pretty

straightforward: visit the festival’s web site, plug your information
On the “Importance” of Your Film
When you hit speed bumps on the festival circuit one of the natural questions
that might come to mind is: how do festival programmers not see how important
this film/person/subject matter is to the world at large? How can you reject a
film that so many people desperately need to see?
This is particularly true for documentary filmmakers, many of whom can’t

understand repeated rejection notices for a film into which they’ve poured their
heart and soul, on a topic which feels highly relevant and vital to the world.
For those documentarians, programmer David Wilson at True/False has this

insight:
“I have dedicated my life in many ways to nonfiction filmmaking but you know,
it's filmmaking and so we [at True/False] really wanted to be a champion of
craft. I think that one of the ways the festivals most often get into trouble –
especially doc fests – is to program a film, saying 'Well, the movie is not that
great but it's such an important topic.’
To me a decision like that doesn't do any favors for the topic, because a better
film about that topic will come along. It doesn't do any favors for the festival
because your audience comes to think of it as 'well, it's important but it's like
drinking your cod liver oil.' And it doesn't do any favors for the filmmakers
because it doesn't push them to to be better craftspeople.”
Consider also that festivals are under no obligation to program “important” or

socially relevant films of any kind. If they want to play nothing but audience-
pleasing cotton candy, that’s their prerogative so long as the audience keeps
coming back.
That’s where researching your festivals comes in: if all you see on a festival’s
schedule is cotton candy, your social justice documentary probably won’t fit in.
Find an event with a taste for what your film has to offer.

(and your film’s online screener) into their submissions platform of
choice, pay a submission fee, and click “submit.”
What isn’t so obvious is what happens next, and how to make sure
your film has the best chance of distinguishing itself from the
hundreds or thousands of other candidates clogging the festival
mailbox. The most effective way – to make an astonishingly original
and well-executed film – is also the most difficult. Also, since you’re
likely at the point where you consider your film finished, that’s not a
particularly helpful answer for a book about film festivals.
Let’s move on to other things you can do that can realistically help
your chances (however slightly) and ensure a smooth submission
process.
Attention to Detail
The number one submissions strategy is also the most obvious, and
yet it’s also the one that a significant number of filmmakers fail to
follow: submit to the right festivals for your film and follow
instructions during the submissions process. You should have
covered the first part while researching festivals for your film’s
pyramid; the second part is largely a matter of paying attention to
details and presenting your film in a light that hopefully makes it
attractive to the festival in question.
Your first stop on the submissions path should of course be the web
sites of the festivals to which you’re submitting. That’s where you’ll
find the submissions forms to be filled out online or (more and more
rarely) printed and mailed. Fill out the forms completely and
accurately. If something doesn’t seem to apply to your film or is just
confusing, don’t guess – call or e-mail the festival to ask.

“Festival Staff Pet Peeve #1: Filmmakers who don’t follow directions. The
submission information for South by Southwest is pretty simple, but you
would not believe how many people do it incorrectly. If a filmmaker isn’t
paying enough attention to read and follow our instructions it makes them
seem like they don’t care about their movie or our festival. It’s
unprofessional.”
- Claudette Godfrey, SXSW Short Film Programmer
Submissions Strategies That Work
- Submit early. Many festivals have early deadlines with reduced

fees. Submitting early not only keeps your fees low, but it also means
that your film arrives during the slow period of the festival's annual
cycle. The few films that arrive that far ahead of the deadline are
much more likely to get individual attention from the actual
programming directors instead of being screened out by volunteer
pre-screeners.
- Include a short cover letter with your submission. Along with the
question “is this film any good,” the screening committee who
watches your film will be asking “Why is this film appropriate for
this festival?” A cover letter is your opportunity to enumerate the
reasons that your picture is particularly well-suited to play a certain
festival.
Once upon a time cover letters were essential, but changes in the way
festivals accept submissions have reduced their importance.
In days gone by when Withoutabox (WAB) was pretty much the only
online submissions platform going, the first thing a festival
programmer would see when clicking on a film’s name from a list in

WAB would be the cover letter. Cover letters were seen for at least a
few seconds as the programmer browsed over to the video itself.
More recently, Withoutabox and other platforms hide cover letters a

few clicks away from that listing, so those cover letters aren’t seen
unless the programmer specifically goes looking for it. In my humble
opinion, this drastically reduces the need for cover letters,
particularly customized letters.
I do recommend writing a cover letter and tailoring it for festivals

that have major significance for you – your local festival, or a festival
that caters to your specific audience – but a customized letter for each
festival simply doesn’t make sense.
Some traits of good cover letters:
• Short - in most cases, only a few sentences long.

• Well-written - at least cover the basics of grammar and
spelling. Get someone you trust as a writer to proof it for you.
• Specific - don’t talk about how hard you work or how much
passion you put into the film. Every other filmmaker did
much the same. Talk about your subject matter, your audience,
and yourself if those things provide a compelling reason for
the festival to be interested in you.
• Relevant - if you have a particular connection to the festival
(you’re an alum, it’s your hometown, the subject matter, the
locations, etc), this is the time to mention that.
• Remarkable - If your movie was filmed entirely from the back
of an elephant or features never-before-seen footage of
someone famous, say so.
• Funny - if you can make someone laugh in a few sentences,
that will help them remember you.

Your cover letter doesn’t have to be all of these things, but it should
be some of these things.
There are some festival organizers who still believe in – and read –
cover letters.
“I am continually amazed by how many filmmakers using WAB do

not include a cover letter, either online or with their shipment,” says
Michelle Emanuel, former co-director of the Oxford Film Festival.
“Even when they are returning filmmakers. Even when we’ve given
a waiver. Even when we’ve met them at another festival and
encouraged them to submit. But for every filmmaker who does not
include a cover letter, there is another who uses a 300-word synopsis
in lieu of a cover letter.”
- Present yourself and your film professionally. Just as you

wouldn’t show up to a job interview in shorts and a t-shirt, neither
should your submission be sloppy or inappropriate. Your film’s
screener should be free of extra frills like color bars or cutesy video
introductions. Similarly eschew language that hypes your film
beyond credibility or endorsements from people who might have
impressive credentials (“Emmy-winning friend of my uncle”) but
have little relevance to your film. Such tactics won’t help and are
often taken as warning signs that the film itself is lacking.
- If your film has already played at other festivals, accentuate your

proven track record. Add festival laurel graphics to your screener’s
title card as your film progresses. If you’ve played the circuit with
other films, mention them in your cover letter or director’s statement.
- Festivals love returning filmmakers; it indicates their ability to

attract people capable of completing multiple projects and gives
them more to talk about when they announce their programs. “When

I see new projects from filmmakers we’ve programmed before, I’m
immediately interested,” says former Austin Film Festival Program
Director Kelly Williams. “I want to know how they’ve grown as a
filmmaker and I want to see what’s coming next. This is particularly
true and rewarding when shorts creators send us their first features.”
Take advantage of your alumnus status at festivals you’ve played
before by offering your favorite the world premiere – especially if it’s
a top-tier event.
- Make sure you’re submitting under the right category. According

to programmer Charles Judson at the Terminus Conference &
Festival, “some programmers and committees watch films by
category. If your film is in the wrong category, it’s possible that your
movie will be overlooked and not make the cut. Don’t be cute about
the category either. If your doc is really a narrative piece, then put it
in the narrative category. One, doing otherwise can put many
screeners and programmers in a foul mood when they realize what
the filmmaker was trying to do. And two, whoever is watching will
probably spend more time trying to figure out if the film is in the
wrong category than if it’s a good film.”
Submissions Strategies That Don't Work
- Don’t highlight your film’s shortcomings. Even if your picture has

a minuscule budget or flaws that can be explained away with some
background information, don’t risk rejection by drawing attention to
those things. Good movies rise above their limitations instead of
asking the audience to overlook them. Your cover letter and synopsis
should highlight the things that make your film entertaining or
authentic (“shot guerilla-style on the city streets of Philadelphia”)
rather than amateur (“shot on a shoestring budget with a cast of
college friends”).

- Don’t “forget” to include payment with your film, hoping that the
festival staff will watch it out of curiosity and be so overwhelmed by
its quality that they forgive your oversight. Not only is it an unlikely
scenario, it’s disrespectful to the festival. If your budget is restrictive
enough that you can’t submit to festivals with fees, there’s a list of
festivals with no entry fees here:
filmfestivalsecrets.com/no-fee
- Bribes/tchotchkes/promotional items (hats, shirts, keychains) and

press kits mailed physically to the festival are a waste of money, at
least at this stage of the game. The inclusion of such items is often
taken as a sign of desperation. I have heard of rare cases in which
such ploys actually worked (like the film-branded mouse pad that
ended up sitting on the festival programmer’s desk for years
afterwards), but for the most part such trinkets are admired
momentarily before being tossed or handed off to an intern. Press
kits come into play after a film is accepted, or at the earliest when it is
under serious consideration for inclusion.
- No whining, no pestering. It’s OK to email the festival with

periodic updates about your film (particularly if its premiere status
changes), but it’s not OK to call every week thereafter to ask how
things are going. Subscribing festival programmers to your email list
is an especially egregious sin.
If your film doesn’t get into the festival, don’t write about it on your
blog or post about it on social media. Festival programmers talk to
one another, so venting publicly (or otherwise making a nuisance of
yourself) is a good way to alienate festivals beyond those who have
already rejected your film.

Similarly, waging a social media campaign that encourages your
audience to petition a specific festival to play your film is
unwelcome. By all means, demonstrate your film’s audience by
encouraging them to show public support for your picture, but even
well-intentioned bullying is over-aggressive … and unlikely to work.
Withoutabox (RIP), FilmFreeway, and Other

Submissions Platforms
Withoutabox (withoutabox.com) is (or rather was, see below) an

online service that positions itself as a central clearing house for film
festival submissions. Withoutabox (aka WAB) allows filmmakers to
complete a central profile of their film and then submit that film to
multiple festivals with relative ease (at least, compared to filling out
each form by hand). In exchange for handling this process WAB takes
a percentage of the entry fee paid to the festival. WAB also performs
various marketing tasks for the festival in exchange for additional
fees and offers “upgraded” accounts to filmmakers willing to pay for
certain services.
WAB’s presence in the festival world has been controversial. There’s

no question that its debut instantly lubricated the gears of festival
submissions, allowing young and obscure festivals to attract
numbers of entries previously unattainable. The service’s ability to
spread information about new festivals and the fact that it enabled
filmmakers to “impulse shop” from their account has been a
significant factor in the proliferation of small festivals and the way
they do business.

Unfortunately, WAB also contributed to higher fees overall as
festivals increased what they charge to filmmakers to offset WAB’s
commissions and required discounts. (The company offers discounts
to “upgraded” WAB users but requires that the festival discount
submissions fees for those users without participation in the WAB
upgrade revenue.) Practices like these are the reason that some
festivals refused to use WAB at all. It’s no accident that some of the
top-tier festivals prefer to control their own submissions process —
since they don’t need WAB in order to attract large numbers of
submissions, why give up a percentage of the revenue?
In recent years a number of competing platforms sprung up to offer

submissions services similar to Withoutabox. Most prominent among
these is FilmFreeway (filmfreeway.com), which went after WAB’s
business aggressively with lower commissions for festivals, a greatly
simplified browsing and submitting experience for filmmakers, and
the integration of Vimeo screeners.
Festivals and filmmakers alike, attracted by FilmFreeway’s modern

interface, reduced fees, and screw-you marketing approach towards
its main competitor, apparently abandoned WAB in droves. At one
time Withoutabox held a virtual monopoly over the film festival
submissions space. By the time you read this, however, Withoutabox
will have ceased operation. Amazon called it quits in early 2019,
notifying its users that the site would close by the end of October
2019.
I considered removing all mention of Withoutabox from this chapter

but the fact is that it fundamentally changed the way festival
submissions work. We will likely continue to see mentions of the site
on the web and its effects will be felt for years to come. Hopefully
this background will help you understand the process and stories
you may hear from festival staff and other filmmakers.

So what does this all mean for you?
For one thing, if you’re going to submit to film festivals, you’re going
to have to use one or more of these systems. There are a number of
such festival platforms, each of which has its own spin on the
process. Many festivals you choose will only accept submissions
through one platform or the other, so there’s no getting around
maintaining an account on at least some of them.
In the case of most of these platforms filmmakers may use the

directory to search for festivals for free, and of course there’s a fee for
most reputable fests. Younger festivals will often offer a free
submission to certain categories or during a certain window of time
to encourage submissions. The fees and deadlines are often identical
across platforms.
As for festivals, well – when you submit the old-fashioned way (in
that rare event that they offer their own non-outsourced submission
method), they get to keep more of the submission fee for themselves.
I’m not sure there’s an easier way to score points with a festival
director than by putting more money in the event’s coffers.
Tips for Submitting Online
- Take the time to completely fill out the information about your
film, including the obscure crew positions they ask for. (Within
reason, anyway.) Festivals don’t often make use of this information
but it’s better to cover your bases than to be found wanting. Pay
particular attention to things like press kits, director statements, and
still images – we’ll cover this in more detail in the next chapter.

- Resist the temptation to impulse shop. There’s no faster way to
blow through your submissions budget than by poking around on
these platforms, looking for cool new festivals. Once you’ve done
your research and made a submissions plan, stick to it.
- Similarly, resist the lure of the “last chance deadline” emails that
these platforms will send you. Like every marketing email, they’re
designed to instill a sense of urgency on your part at the point where
it would cost you the most to submit to the festival they’re hawking.
Stick to your submission plan.
- Take advantage of the search features that these sites offer, but
check out the festival web sites too. Event information on any
platform is often incomplete or incorrect, especially for festivals that
have outdated listings. In some cases you will find festivals that have
gone defunct completely or that have multiple listings.
- Check in on your various submission accounts every week or so to

check the status of your submissions, but don’t believe everything it
says. Some festivals never update their films on their platforms past
the point of “received, under consideration” (preferring to notify
their filmmakers of acceptance or rejection by other means) and other
fests don’t notify their filmmakers any other way.
- Don’t allow any single platform to be your only window on the

festival world. Many worthwhile festivals don’t use the larger
platforms and these systems don’t always represent festivals
correctly. Find out about festivals through other sources: other online
sources, your fellow filmmakers, industry publications.

Hit Submit
Following your festival pyramid and the timeline you created in the
last chapter, prepare submissions “packages” for your chosen top tier
fests. You probably don’t want to send submissions to more than two
top tier festivals at once – if and when you’re accepted to your first
top tier festival, there’s always the chance that you can negotiate
directly with the programming department at your other top picks.
When you’re ready to move on to your second tier, you can start
sending out progressively larger numbers of submissions. Try and
stick to one tier at a time until you feel that tier is tapped out, then
move down a tier and continue sending submissions. (As discussed
previously, you might want to overlap tiers as you come to the end of
a higher tier.) Keep an eye on the calendar to spot potential conflicts
and prioritize if they exist. If it becomes an issue, you should already
know which of two concurrent festivals you’d rather attend.
Now take a deep breath and hit “submit.”
Get Organized: Keep Records
As you send off each submission, use your festival notebook to

record the submissions and pertinent information about them like:
• The date you sent it

• The festival’s expected notification date (sometimes listed on
the fest web site)
• The submissions platform you used to submit (so you know
where to go looking!)

• If the festival provided one, record your film’s unique tracking
ID for that event
• Whether the festival accepted or rejected your submission,
and when you found out
This may sound like a lot of trivia to track, especially since the
submissions platforms do a lot of this for you. Once you collect it for
a few festivals you’ll be able to compare the festivals for overall
responsiveness and you’ll also have a quick reference dashboard for
which festivals still owe you a response. Including the expected
notification date will keep you from freaking out prematurely and
remind you when a polite inquiry is appropriate.
For more info on writing cover letters and tracking your

submissions, check out the Better Film Festival Submissions
Toolkit, available for free at filmfestivalsecrets.com/resources
No Word? Check in With the Festival
Very often the festival will be required to confirm their receipt of

your submission. Sometimes this is automatic and instant; sometimes
it is a manual process.
If enough time has passed that a festival should have received your
submission and you haven’t received confirmation, it’s OK to give
them a call or send an email to confirm. If the person on the other
end of the phone engages you in conversation, that’s great — feel
free to answer questions about your film and to express your desire
to play at the festival. This is a perfectly reasonable and polite thing
to do.

This does not, however, mean that the festival programmer is now
your personal friend. Remember: no pestering.
Wait and Repeat
Now comes the hard part: the waiting, followed by the almost certain
rejection (at least at first). For at least a few months after your first
round of submissions you’re going to be sitting on your hands
waiting to hear whether your your film made it through a screening
process that is murky at best.
When you do hear back from the festival, the answer is likely to be
“no” and most festivals don’t spend time telling filmmakers exactly
why their film didn’t make the cut. With hundreds or thousands of
submissions per festival it’s not hard to see why they don’t make the
extra effort, but the end result can be frustrating. While your chances
of acceptance are in direct proportion to the quality of your movie,
even excellent films get turned down for a variety of reasons. No
matter the quality of your movie the festival submissions process can
feel like a lottery with very expensive tickets.
There are plenty of things you can do to stay busy while you wait
and we’ll cover them in the next chapter. But when a rejection letter
does come (and it will), don’t waste time feeling sorry for yourself.
Pull out your festival pyramid, bump up the next festival in your list
to the top, and submit again. Your own patience will tell you when
it’s time to stop chasing top-tier festivals and move on to your
second- or even third-tier fests.

Banging Your Head Against The Wall
It does occasionally happen that a filmmaker will submit to fifteen or

twenty festivals and not be accepted by any of them. Even with a
great film, your film can be knocked out of the running by a number
of factors that have nothing to do with the film itself – maybe it’s too
similar to something that played last year, or touches on a subject
that the festival programmer doesn’t think the audience will respond
to. Spending a few hundred bucks with nothing to show for it isn’t
the best feeling in the world, but don’t give up yet.
First let’s look at a few good things about your situation.
- If you haven't been accepted to any film festivals yet, then you
haven't given up your world premiere either. Your film is still
essentially starting with a blank slate. It could be worse – like if your
film had already had its premiere at the NoPlace Film Festival and
you couldn't even offer your world premiere to a more prestigious
festival.
- You can still go back and fix some of the things that might be wrong
with your film. Maybe the sound is bad, or it needs a re-edit to excise
ten or twenty minutes of footage that stop the story dead in its tracks.
Maybe all your film needs is a bit of extra investment (time, money,
talent) to make it acceptable to a wide range of festivals.
- What you’ve spent in submissions fees so far is probably still less

than it would have cost you to hold a four-wall screening, and you
wouldn't even have the benefit of experience to let you know that
your film was less perfect than you thought. By now your movie has
been seen by at least two dozen people who watch hundreds of indie
films every year; the rejection letters are their way of telling you that
your film needs some work.

Or maybe not – Dan Brawley at the Cucalorus Film Festival sees
festival rejection in a different different light.
"I've spent a lot of time thinking about this issue. As an artist I get rejected
all the time. But as a curator on the other side of the bargain, it's really
frustrating when a filmmaker responds to a rejection with ‘I guess my film
wasn't good enough.’
That's totally absurd. That's like saying that I went to the grocery store
today and I bought everything that was good in the entire store? That
everything left in the store is just garbage? Of course not. We're making so
many decisions as curators that are distinctly not about whether the film is
good or not. That is just one of many considerations. It's just more
complicated than that."
What to Do About Repeated Rejection
- Call every festival you submitted to and ask to talk to a

programmer. Do this in the off season, preferably a month or so after
each festival ends so that the new crop of films hasn't erased the
previous set from the programmer's mind. That programmer may or
may not have seen your film, but they can put you in touch with
someone who has if you ask nicely enough. That person may be kind
enough to give you some constructive criticism. With 10+ festival
rejections under your belt there must be someone willing to share an
opinion with you about your movie.
Ask specifically for constructive criticism and be respectful of the

programmer's time. Expect some festivals to give you the runaround
and call back if you don't get a return call within a week. Gentle
persistence is the name of the game here, but at this point you've

earned the right to be told why your film isn't getting any traction on
the festival circuit.
“We receive too many films to do detailed coverage of each one,”

says Jesse Trussell, Programmer at BAMCinemaFest. “But I do
believe in helping filmmakers understand why they’re not doing
well on the festival circuit, so I do answer e-mails for help –
eventually. The time when rejection letters go out is our busiest time
of year, but after the festival I’ll go back and try to answer each of
those requests personally, especially if I’ve seen the film myself.”
- If you deem a re-edit to be necessary, complete the new cut of the

film, conduct some more test screenings, and submit to a new set of
festivals.
You may be tempted to re-submit to the festivals that rejected you

last time, and after a re-edit, your film is probably eligible for
submission in the next festival year. Check each festival’s fine print.
However, there is a high probability that the festival programmers
will recognize your film as a repeated submission and reject it out of
hand without realizing the significance of the re-cut. Better to avoid
this if you can.
Yes, this means delaying your festival dreams for a while, but if you
think your film has a shot at the top-tier festivals after your changes
then you should start the cycle again from the beginning. (This also
gives you some time to save up some extra change from your day job
for submission fees.) Shoot for the moon and then adjust your sights
downward.
Jarod Neece, Senior Film Programmer at South by Southwest,

encourages submitting films again – if they’ve been reworked:

“If you’re re-submitting the same exact film thinking, ‘oh, maybe it’s just
that the right person didn't watch it’ then that's probably not going to work.
Every year there are one or two films that submitted the previous year and
then took a step back, took our constructive criticism into account. They
came back the next year with the film that maybe they actually wanted to
make and we've accepted it. So we're more than happy to watch the film
again if you took it apart and put it back together or shot additional footage,
but if it's just the same movie with color correction a few small changes then
I just wouldn't waste your time.”
- At some point you may come to the conclusion that a top-tier

festival is simply out of reach of the grasp of this particular film. In
the brutal light of the typical acceptance rates of those festivals, it's
more than likely the truth. It's time to look at smaller festivals where
at least your film can be played in front of an audience of
independent film fans. Go back to the first stage and do some
obsessively thorough research about the kinds of festivals to which
you should be submitting. Look at their past lineups to get a sense of
the kinds of films they want. You're searching for a philosophy and a
programming style that matches your filmmaking personality.
- If you've done all of the above and you're still coming up empty but
you still crave that festival experience, you can always try the “spray
and pray” approach. Pick as many small festivals as you can with
low entry fees that you can cram into your already depleted budget
and submit en masse. Someone somewhere has to accept you, right? I
don’t actually recommend this method – it’s just throwing good
money after bad. If you’ve reached this point even after trying the
strategies above, chances are your film is fundamentally flawed. Get
as much feedback as you can from festival staff and fellow
filmmakers, learn from your mistakes, and start funneling those
submission fees into the budget for your next film.

Saving Money on Submission Fees
Entry fees are the bane of filmmakers everywhere but railing against
them is a little like cursing the sun for rising each morning. Film
festivals aren’t getting rich from this income but it’s unlikely they’ll
be abolished wholesale any time soon. Here are a few things you can
do to increase your chances of festival play without spending
unnecessarily.
- Be honest about your situation before you go asking for favors. If

you’re a student who made a film for under $500, it’s understandable
that you don’t have a ton of money for festival submissions. If your
picture’s budget was in the millions then you’re probably in a better
position to pay for a few entry fees. (You should have included them
as a line item in your movie’s budget.) Respect festival directors
enough to realize that they’ll figure out if you’re just being cheap.
- Submit early. As mentioned previously, many festivals have early

deadlines with reduced fees. In what is essentially a numbers game
(getting your film in front of as many eyeballs as possible in the
hopes of connecting with a programmer who “gets” your work), this
is an easy move that gives you more swings at the plate. (Or spins of
the wheel, or whatever – pick your statistical metaphor.)
- Locate festivals without entry fees. As discussed in chapter one,

there are many festivals out there that charge no fees to filmmakers,
particularly those seeking films related to special interests. I maintain
a list of these on the web here: filmfestivalsecrets.com/no-fee.
Festivals outside the U.S. are much more likely to offer no-fee
submissions so if you’re an American filmmaker, don’t forget to look
at festivals abroad. You always wanted to visit Europe, right?

- Festival fee waivers exist, but they usually occur as part of a
specific negotiation between a festival programmer and a
filmmaker in whose work they are already interested. Some festivals
give waivers for particular reasons and others refuse to give waivers
at all. If offered one you should of course take advantage of it, but
keep in mind that the festivals most likely to give fee waivers are
usually the ones that can least afford to give up the revenue. If you
simply must ask for some consideration from a festival, see if they’ll
extend an early deadline or grant you a small discount to lessen the
burden on your submissions budget.
- Erik Jambor, co-founder of the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival

and Head of Festival Programming at BendFilm, advises filmmakers
to be honest and friendly when seeking waivers but to realize that
fee revenue is often directly tied to the festival’s ability to perform its
functions –- including travel, lodging, awards and other perks for
filmmakers. That said, he does admit that waivers can be granted for
the right films. “Filmmakers who have received awards or
recommendations from festivals or programmers I know and trust
are more likely to be considered for a waiver, since they can
essentially skip ‘round one’ of our selection process. It is also
important that the request comes as an individualized message that
indicates a clear interest in my specific festival. Mass emails asking
for a waiver are pretty easy to ignore.”
- Negotiate with visiting festival directors at festivals where your

film is playing. If you’re lucky enough to play at a large film festival
where programmers are scouting for material, it’s likely that some of
them will approach you after your screenings about your film and
their festival. Be sure to have screener cards (see chapter 3) on hand
that they can take with them. Be sure to ask directly: “Is there
anything else you need from me to be considered for your festival?”
If the answer is “no,” consider the fee waived. Be sure to grab the

programmer’s business card and follow up in a week or so to
confirm.
See chapter 6 for more things to do on the ground when attending a

festival.
Extra credit: read filmfestivalsecrets.com/fundamentals for the 3

Fundamental Rules of Submitting to Film Festivals.

Chapter 2 Review Checklist
- Be sure you're submitting to the right festivals for your film and pay
attention to detail during the submissions process.
- Submission do's: Do include a cover letter (but no need to create a

custom letter for each one). Be professional. Accentuate your track
record. Rely on your previous festival connections, if any.
- Submission don'ts: Don't mention your film's flaws. Don't resort to

subterfuge or bribery. Don't bother with a press kit or supplemental
material unless the festival asks for it.
- Keep detailed records of each of your submissions in your

notebook.
- Rejection is an inescapable part of the process. If it becomes

excessive, try to learn why it's happening and fix the problem if
possible.
- There are ways to save money on festival fees, but keep in mind
that fees support festival functions including filmmaker perks. Seek
out festivals that charge no fees and be prepared to negotiate for
reduced fees if you truly feel like you need the special consideration.

Chapter 3 - While You Wait
Hurry Up and Wait
At this point you may feel like you’ve gone fishing for festivals –
you’ve cast a few lines out there and you’re standing around waiting
for a bite. In the meantime, however, there’s plenty to do. Whether
your film gets into a big festival and sells its first time out or if you
end up playing the lower tiers of the festival circuit before
distributing the film on your own, the weapons you’ll need for your
marketing arsenal are essentially the same.
Now is the time to assemble those weapons and arrange things in

advance as much as possible without spending money on unknowns.
When the time comes you want to be ready to pull the trigger on
your film’s marketing campaign.
Similarly, you’ll want to become familiar with the conventions and

rhythms of a film festival, not to mention the logistics of travel and
communication while away from your home environment. It’s
difficult to execute a festival marketing campaign under the best of
circumstances. The festival routine of constant distractions and late
nights will make it even harder. Take the time now to pay attention
to the details that will make your life easier when you’re in a strange
town and festival madness hits.
Create a Visual Identity
In this chapter we’ll cover a wide variety of marketing tools from

postcards and flyers to web sites and social networks, all the way up
to hiring a publicist. An important watchword when constructing
each of these tools for your own film is consistency. Take, for example,
the marketing campaign around any typical Hollywood movie. All of
the individual instances of that campaign — the web site, the

promotional popcorn bags, the television commercials — draw from
the same set of visual elements. Fonts, still images, color schemes,
and catchphrases combine to form a visual identity for that film.
From the outset it is important to define the visual identity for your
picture and then stick to it with every piece of marketing material
you release. Mismatched marketing campaigns give off an air of
amateurism that may not be fatal to your attempts to draw attention
to your film, but well-executed branding will definitely give your
picture a leg up on the competition.
Once you’ve figured out what you want the elements of your brand
to be, take the time to write them down. This may seem like a silly
exercise but it’s crucial for your own reference and for the use of
anyone else who becomes involved in marketing your film. Did you
decide to use Helvetica or Helvetica Neue for your logo font? Is the
color scheme black and sea-foam or black and chartreuse? Your
visual identity record will let you know. For extra credit, gather your
selected stills and logo files into one place online where you can
share your notes on visual identity and how these things should be
used together.
Business Cards
It happens every time I go to a festival: I see a great film, I sit through

an entertaining Q&A, I walk up to talk to the filmmaker afterwards.
After a pleasant conversation I ask for his business card, and I’m met
with a rueful grin and the all-too-familiar phrase: “I don’t have any
cards with me.”
This is a frustrating situation for both parties; a distributor or other

industry type wants to know how to get hold of a filmmaker later,
but other methods of transferring that information (a handwritten
Chapter 3: While You Wait 89

note, a cell phone number hastily typed into a cell phone) are
awkward and often lost in the shuffle. There’s a reason that business
cards have survived into the twenty-first century: they’re convenient,
simple, and inexpensive. So get some!
Start off with about 500 cards to really do it right. The statement “I’d
love to give you my card, but I ran out” sucks almost as much as “I
forgot to bring some.” Because of their simplicity and size, business
cards are still the primary method of information exchange during
film festivals and conventions. The object of any professional
gathering is to establish new relationships, and in the (often alcohol-
soaked) haze of a film festival the business card is your ticket to
remembering and being remembered.
You can get cards printed at Moo (filmfestivalsecrets.com/moo –

that’s a referral link that should get you a discount) for not a lot of
money or you can print some yourself on a laser printer with those
perforated sheets. Go the Moo route if you have time; it’s less trouble
and they’ll look much better than the home brewed kind. If you’re
pressed for time, don’t worry too much about what they look like –
just make sure they have your name, the name of your film, and your
e-mail address. If you’re the outgoing type, include your phone
number. If that sketches you out too much you can hand-write your
number for those people you feel you can trust. If your film has a
web site (and as you’ll learn later in this chapter, it should), include
the address for that too.
Some filmmakers use company cards or personal cards that don’t

include information about their film. In the context of a festival,
that’s a mistake. Don’t make your new contact scratch her head the
next day when she tries to remember which movie you made or why
she has your card. Sure, she can probably check the festival web site
but anything you can do to grease the wheels of networking is

helpful. If you find yourself at a festival with a handful of generic
cards, at least do your new friends the favor of handwriting your
film’s title on the back.
If you really want to do things right, take some time with your card’s
design; work out a trade with a graphic designer friend and make
some cards that pop. How much you spend on things like double-
sided cards and full-color printing is up to you, but a memorable
business card certainly can’t hurt.
This is one of the better cards I’ve

seen out there – funny, unusual,
memorable. Adam usually has a
number of projects out at once so he
has a general purpose card.

Screener Cards
Before online video screeners supplanted DVDs as the preferred

submission format, filmmakers’ backs used to bend under the weight
of multiple DVD copies of their films they would schlep around with
them at film festivals. After all, you don’t want to meet someone
prominent in the industry and not have a copy of your film handy,
right?
Online screeners present their own challenges. There’s nothing to

carry, true, but also no physical reminder of a chance encounter at a
festival. Plus there’s the need to follow up with an email link to the
recipient. Annoying, right?
My solution: “screener cards” – business cards printed with the film’s

private screener link and password. (Or, if you plan to change the
password regularly, a private web page where you can list that
information on an updated basis.) These take the place of those
screener DVDs – you have something physical to hand them that
adds practically no weight.
These cards also should have basic info about the film including a log
line, your contact info, and a good key still image from the film. (All
matching your visual identity guidelines, of course.)
You might be tempted to upgrade to postcards for this, but don’t do

it! Postcards get folded up and thrown away. In my experience,
business cards stick around. I don’t know why.
For bonus points, replace the alphabet soup of your screener’s web
address with a short URL that’s easy to type and use that on the card.
You can use URL mapping on your existing site or a URL shortener
like bit.ly to do this.

You'll only be giving these to legitimate members of the industry, so
you should only need about 100 cards to start (and that should carry
you through a couple of festivals at least). Get a small quantity of
good cards that will make a good impression and stand up to being
shoved into pockets and purses and who knows what.
Build a Web Site
As a filmmaker, your web site is one of the best marketing tools you
have. Long before the lights go down at your first screening, your
web site is where people will learn about you and your film. Months
(years!) after the festival ends, your movie’s site will be the
touchstone for those curious about your work. Dollar for dollar, there
is nothing else you can buy that will work for your movie as
tirelessly and as effectively as the electronic sentinel that is a web
site.
So make it good.
There are three basic types of people who will be using your web
site: those who want to see your film (the audience), those who want
to promote your film (journalists and festivals), and those who want
to do business with you (distributors and other filmmakers).
Fortunately they all want the same basic things: information about
your movie and information about you.
- Include lots of text about the film, including the names of the cast
and crew, so that the site shows up in Google searches. The fancy
name for this is “search engine optimization,” but in regular English
it means that search engines like Google grab onto plain old
machine-readable text best. If you’re rendering that text as graphics

or you’ve embedded it into a Flash presentation, you could be
shooting yourself in the foot. Keep it simple and leave the flaming
logos to the site for the next Tomb Raider film. (Thankfully technology
has rendered Flash obsolete, but gaudy web sites still abound.)
The text on your web site should include:
• A short synopsis (one or two sentences)

• A long synopsis (about 300-500 words - get someone else to
write this)
• The cast and crew list (as complete as possible, with bios for
principal cast if possible)
• A list of your screenings, past and upcoming
• Quote excerpts about your films from positive reviews (link
back to the reviews)
• A brief statement about the current distribution status of the
film
• News about the film and/or the subjects of it (see notes about
blogging below)
I am of the opinion that filmmakers should not write the synopses for
their own films. They’re usually not writers and have no idea how to
create a short, compelling synopsis. Instead they often give too much
away, writing a full plot description instead. Find a friend whose
writing you trust (preferably someone who has done some film
criticism before) and get them to write your synopsis.
- Post a number of striking photos at different resolutions, and make

them easily available for download. The less you make a journalist
(whether an editor from Variety or a local blogger) work, the more
likely you are to get good coverage, and photos are a major part of
what journalists look for from a film’s web site. Taking screen

captures from an online screener is work. Resizing photos is work.
Do that work ahead of time so that they don’t have to. Suggested
sizes for photos (from biggest to smallest) include:
» Giant, press-ready TIFF files at 300 or 600 DPI. (If you don’t
know what DPI stands for, find someone who does and have
them prepare your images for you.) These are for the print
journalists — they’ll need something at an extremely high
resolution so stills that look fine on the web just won’t do.
You should only need a couple of these (representative
images of your cast in a key scene from the movie) and you
may want to put these in a compressed ZIP file to reduce the
time it takes to download them.
» Computer wallpaper images (JPEG or PNG), about 1000

pixels wide. Your biggest fans will want images from your
film on their computer desktops, and there’s no reason to
deny them the opportunity to promote your movie in their
own small way. A logo or a watermark with the movie title
and/or URL of your film’s web site is appropriate. Include
your two key images from the TIFF files above and a few
others. Close-ups of cast members are always good. If you
have some particularly scenic establishing shots or aerial
photography from your film, include that too.
» Include a head shot of the director if so desired. Make sure

all images are properly labeled so that someone browsing the
web site knows exactly who is in each picture. Festivals often
pull stills for their online program guides directly from the
film’s web site, so proper labeling is important.
» Still photos should be taken during the shoot, but not while
the film/video camera is rolling. (You don’t want the sound

of the camera clicking captured on the audio.) If you failed to
get still images during your shoot, get your cast back in
wardrobe and stage scenes from the film in as many of the
locations you used as possible. Buy, beg, borrow, or steal time
from a professional photographer, because an iconic photo –
something that instantly grabs attention and gives the viewer
a sense of your film’s subject and tone – can do more to attract
audiences and buyers than just about anything else.
» As with text, don’t hide your images inside a PDF, a fancy

Flash slideshow, or assume that a trailer is a sufficient
substitute for still photos. If you want the word to spread,
you have to make the spreading easy, and that means
providing easy access to relevant media.
- Make posters, flyers, other promotional materials available for

download and printing. If you’re going to go to the trouble of
designing posters and flyers, you might as well make them available
to the public electronically too. You never know: some enterprising
person who loves your film might just print out a few and put them
up in their favorite coffee shop when your film comes to town. (If
possible, upload different versions for different festivals, not just one
generic flyer.) Bloggers and other journalists have been known to use
film posters as companion graphics to their writing, so make sure
you can accommodate such activity as well.
- Publish your contact info, including e-mail, telephone, and snail

mail as appropriate. Your web site is your business card to the world
so it should include the same information. If the world can’t get in
touch with you, it can’t write nice stories about you. Or offer you a
new job on a film crew. Or buy your movie.

- Post a trailer. Or five. Different people may find different cuts of
your trailer more appealing than others. If you have different cuts,
make them all available on the site. See the section later in the
chapter for tips on cutting a trailer.
Any halfway entertaining footage (bloopers, deleted scenes, etc) that

didn’t actually make it into the film should be present somewhere on
the site. Include links to your previous work, especially short films
that can be digested quickly and easily online. Make sure your trailer
and other supplemental material is on YouTube or a similar video
site so that visitors can post it on their own web sites and blogs. Give
away as much free entertainment as you can. It’s a good way to win
fans who will later pay to see your work at a film festival or on video.
- Start a blog. Yeah, you read that right. A blog. A blog is a great way
to promote your film, both before and after it’s made. During
production you can keep a diary of each day’s work on the film.
Afterwards you can use it to promote special events in the life of the
film – the festival submission process, upcoming screenings, other
work by the cast and crew, and (for documentaries) updates on the
film’s subjects. People always want to know “what next?” and “what
happened to so-and-so?” Let your blog be the delivery mechanism.
Most filmmakers like the idea of starting a blog but don’t have a clue
what to put in it. The answer is pretty simple — it should be the
record of the life of your film. Post about the making of the movie.
Profile your cast and crew. Mention your other projects. Announce
your upcoming screenings. Post recaps of your question-and-answer
sessions. Say happy birthday to your director of photography. If your
film is a documentary, post news about your doc’s subject. (You can
even get Google News to e-mail you the latest stories on your subject
of choice.) It’s a big world out there, and there’s lots to talk about. A

blog provides your fans with a reason to come back, so even if you
just post once a week, post.
- Create a mailing list. Your web site should ask visitors to sign up
for e-mail updates. Anyone who cares enough about your film to
actually sign up for e-mail updates about it should be considered
part of your close, personal fan club. Treat these people right and
they will return your kindness in unpredictable ways — all because
they have an interest in your movie, or its subject matter, or maybe
even in you.
Do not sign people up for your e-mail list without their permission
— an invitation to join is fine, but simply tossing them on the list and
sending messages they didn’t ask for is called spam.
Mailing list messages should be less frequent than updates to your

blog, but once or twice a month is fine if you have something to say. Be
sure to announce upcoming screenings in your e-mails, and mention
the existence of your blog. Every e-mail you send to the list should
have a link to your web site.
Mailchimp (mailchimp.com) is the current king of email marketing

providers, but lots of cheap/free systems exist. Google around a bit
to find the one you like best.
- Take advantage of existing social networks. People spend hours

each day on services like Twitter and Facebook; insert yourself there
and take advantage of the tools they provide. A Facebook page isn’t
a substitute for a real web site, but you’d be foolish not to have a
presence there at all. Make profiles on the various social media sites
you know you’ll use consistently, and ignore the rest. A social media
profile that goes stale is worse than one that doesn’t exist. Just make

sure your profiles all link back to the mothership: your main web
site.
- When you start receiving reviews, post complimentary quotes

from those reviews on your site and link back to them. E-mail the
author of the review mentioning your link and ask for a link back.
You should be doing periodic Google searches for your film’s title to
find the latest mentions of your movie. Anywhere you find your film
referenced, e-mail the author to make sure that an accompanying link
is included.
- Your web site address (URL) should be as simple as you can make
it. It’s not necessary to make sure it ends in “.com” but people still
seem to prefer that. Then spread the URL everywhere. It should be
on all of your printed material and most especially in the signature of
every e-mail you send. Think about all the e-mails you send out in a
day – sometimes even your friends and family need to be reminded
of your film’s existence.
- Don’t just set it and forget it – a web site needs tending. Think of it
as your end of an ongoing conversation with your audience. If you
don’t hold up your end of the conversation, the audience will get
bored and move on. Similarly you need to update your social
network pages on a regular basis. You (or someone on your team)
should always be reaching out to existing fans and potential new
fans through every electronic avenue possible.
You don’t have to do it all yourself. This all probably sounds like a
lot of work, and you’re not wrong. The good news is that you don’t
have to learn HTML or CSS or programming, and you don’t have to
write every word of content on the site. Recruit from within your
crew or elsewhere in your personal network. Your brother’s
girlfriend may be just the nerd you need to get your film’s web site

up and running. Maybe your D.P. or assistant producer is a budding
writer who would be willing to keep the blog updated. You just have
to ask.
Having read this section you may be asking yourself: do I really

need to create a web site for my film?
I’ll let Cameron McAllister, Associate Director of the Atlanta Film

Festival, tell you why the answer is “yes.”
“Sometimes when I’m watching a submission, I’ll search online for the film
and its creator to learn more about the film’s history and the director’s
previous work. If I don’t find much, I think one of the following things must
be true: A. you are ashamed of your movie, B. you don’t care about its
success, C. you can’t get your act together, or D. you have no clue what you
are doing.
Having a website for your film or a distinct presence across various digital
platforms (IMDb, Facebook, etc.) is an instant way to show festival
organizers, distributors and audiences that you are thinking about your
film’s future. When it comes time for a screener or programmer to watch
your film, inevitably they are also looking at the supplementary materials
you've uploaded, your previous credits and the links you've shared.
It might be too early for you to have a finished press kit and this might be
your very first film credit—but you can always make sure you have a web
presence. This tells them that you plan on marketing your movie and you’ll
be an active participant in promoting your screenings, should they program
your film.”

Printed Material
It’s one of the most pervasive images in the fantasies of indie

filmmakers — a town plastered in posters advertising the movies at a
film festival. Posters can be attention-grabbing, but my feeling is that
flyers and postcards posted or distributed at random on walls or in
stacks rarely convince anyone to go to one movie over another.
Rather the repeated reinforcement of the fact that the film exists is the
goal, so that when a potential viewer encounters more concrete
information about the film, they have some vague idea of a
connection to something they saw earlier. That “oh yeah, I remember
hearing about that” moment is an important psychological weapon –
people like to be in the know or at least have some familiarity with
something (a film, a book, a musician) before they commit to the
experience. The more you can prime that pump of the mind, the
more people you’ll see at your screenings.
The common types of printed material are:
- Postcards. Probably the most widespread physical marketing tool

of the indie filmmaker, postcards are durable, transportable,
attractive, and cheap.
» Many promotional postcards at festivals are miniature

reproductions of the film’s poster, a move which can be
effective but just as often can be a mistake. A poster designed
to take advantage of the large format can be unrecognizable
at the reduced size; in this case you’re much better off using a
still from the film and adding elements like the logo, tagline,
and web site URL. Postcards are generally cheap enough to
print in full color.

» Discounts are available at larger print runs, so you’ll want
to design postcards that can be used at multiple festivals and
print up a bunch. Leave some room on the front and/or back
for custom messages about each festival; you can print these
up on mailing labels and do a quick peel-n-stick as the
festival approaches.
» Make sure the front says enough about your film that just
the one side will do, as there are situations in which you’ll
want to use just the one side. Glue a postcard to the front of
an off-the-shelf pocket folder and voila! – instant custom press
kit folder. (And yes, there are a few rare instances in which
you’ll want to make printed press kits.)
- Posters. The most glamorous of printed promotional material,

posters are definitely the way to make a splash. Posters can be
colorful and fun, they offer vast expanses of space for promoting
your film, and they’re visible from yards away. Their strengths can
also be their weaknesses, though: large posters can be difficult to
post in shop windows or in other public places, they can be unwieldy
to carry around, and it’s all too easy to go overboard on poster
design and end up with a complicated mess. To top it off, large-
format printing can be expensive and time consuming. A few tips on
doing posters effectively:
» If you’re going to hire someone to do graphic design, the

poster is probably where you want to spend that money, since
it’s a visual element you’ll use over and over again. Insist on
getting the original design files (Illustrator or whatever your
designer uses) so you can make small edits later. Get a
recommendation from a filmmaker friend to a designer who
has done movie posters before – you don’t want to pay for the

time it will take some neophyte to learn what the standard
sizes and conventions are for this kind of layout.
There are lots of options for printing posters online, but look
into your options at local print shops too. A mom-n-pop shop
can be the best bottom-dollar option since you won’t be
paying for shipping, and you’ll be supporting your local
economy in the bargain. However, they may have certain
time or quantity requirements that the internet shops can
bypass. If you’re a student, talk to the staff of the student
newspaper and see if they can help you cut a deal with their
printer. Slip them a screener of your film for some local
coverage while you’re at it.
» If you can’t afford (or can’t barter for) a graphic designer,

you’ll have to give it a go yourself. In this case it’s best to
keep the poster as simple as possible — less is definitely more
if you’re not exactly sure of what you’re doing. At the very
least try to get hold of a computer with Adobe Illustrator or
similar design software installed; there are few things as
frustrating as trying to design a movie poster in Word or
Powerpoint.
» Contact any given festival ahead of time to find out what

size poster is appropriate. If you won’t be able to post the
full-size posters anywhere, you can save yourself the trouble
of carrying them to your destination.
» Invest in some good poster tubes so you can carry more

than 2 or 3 at a time while traveling. If you’re ordering a new
run of posters just before a big festival, consider having them
printed in that town or having them delivered to your
destination. The festival might even take delivery for you.

» As with other printing jobs, quantity is everything – at least
from a pricing perspective. One-off printed posters are
available from photo developers like Costco and Walgreens,
but those can cost as much as $30 each. Professional printers
can print posters for less than a dollar each, but usually only
if you’re ordering in quantities of a thousand or more. The
chances that you’ll need a thousand posters over the course of
your entire festival run is pretty slim, so shop around and
find the best break you can.
- Screening flyers. More practical and portable than posters, 8.5 x 11-
inch flyers have the additional advantage of being cheap and easily
printed just about anywhere. Your flyer should have your film's title,
synopsis, and screening times and places, along with the URL for
your web site. Include a strong still from the film, one that conveys a
lot of emotion and that will reproduce well on a photocopier. Keep it
simple and to the point, and then have a bunch made at your local
copy shop. Spring for some bright colored paper – yellow, green,
whatever works best for your film. If you're driving into the festival
it's probably best to print 1000 or so (depending on the size of the
festival) and store them in your car rather than waste time making
copies while you're in town. If you're flying, consider whether the
time saved is worth the extra bulk and trouble of lugging flyers on
the plane.
Create the basic flyer layout now. When you’re accepted to the
festival you can plug in the festival name, and your screening dates
and times and be ready to print. Create a PDF file as well so you can
forward it to others.
- Press kits are one of those industry standards that everyone

acknowledges but no one seems to use. With the advent of the web

and electronic press kits, the idea of lugging around a folder with
paper printouts seems inconvenient at best and primitive at worst.
Of course deciding to do without a press kit is the best way to ensure
that someone at a festival will ask for it, so I encourage you to go
through the motions. Press kits generally contain the following:
» A press release pertaining to the festival at which you’re

giving the press kits away. You can recycle your press release
at each festival, just change the fest name and any other
particulars. The press release should give the basics about
your film, the running times, and a quote from you about
how excited you are to play at that festival. If you can get one,
a quote from the festival programmer is great.
» A one-sheet about your film. Movie one-sheets are basically

screening flyers with more information about the movie and a
little less info about the screenings. They should include a
lengthier synopsis, some information about the festivals
you’ve played (a good use for those festival laurel graphics),
and an indication of what distribution rights are still
available.
» Once it was common for press kits to come with glossy still
prints from a film. Now that publishing is mostly electronic, a
link to an online repository of media is more appropriate. Feel
free to include your trailer and behind-the-scenes pictures as
well.
As in festival submissions, distribution is mostly about the

quality of your film. (I feel safe in saying that no distribution
exec ever refused to acquire a film saying “I loved the movie
but the press kit was terrible!” ) The same is true for the
press; an attractive press kit might make your picture stick

out among piles of screeners in a festival press office, but it
won’t do much if the critic has a low opinion of your work.
» Supporting material. This can vary from film to film, but the
idea of supporting material is to give a journalist easy access
to writing that they can cut and paste or to provide them with
inspiration for their own piece. Supporting material typically
includes cast & crew bios, reviews of the film from the press,
synopses of various lengths, and an interview with the
director. I’ve also seen lists of commonly asked questions
about the film with answers – sort of a cheat sheet for
potential interviewers.
» Your business card and your film’s postcard or screener

card. Don’t forget these. In some cases they’ll be the only
thing that goes home with the person who picks up your
press kit, or perhaps they’ll be passed on to someone else.
» Other possibilities: Mini-poster? Soundtrack CD? Be

creative. Whatever it is, keep it simple and keep it flat.
- Stickers are fairly common in indie film marketing and they have
countless uses. Slap a logo sticker on just about anything and
you’ve got a branded promo item – coffee mugs, popcorn bags,
you name it. There are a wide variety of sticker printing options,
from cheap paper stickers to the custom-cut vinyl type to the static
cling variety and more. Sticker vendors abound but my favorite is
Sticker Giant (stickergiant.com). Not only do they have a killer
web site but their service and products are top-notch.

Swag
Film festivals are a great place to pick up promo items: I’ve seen
baseball hats, cigarette lighters, wristbands, flashlights, condoms,
baked goods, t-shirts, pens, 3-D glasses, and more. Clever
promotional gimmicks become part of the festival story (“Remember
the year those filmmakers brought the inflatable baseball bats?”) and
spread buzz by being noticeable. Unexceptional giveaways just
waste money.
- If possible, your promo item should reflect the spirit and/or subject
of your film. A baseball cap with your film’s title on it might be
appealing to you but probably won’t mean much to an audience
member who hasn’t heard of it. Instead try matching the item to a
prominent theme in your film. A documentary about culinary school
might benefit from branded oven mitts. Custom-printed baseball
cards (don’t forget the bubble gum!) could help get the word out
about your comedy set in the minor leagues.
- If your film doesn’t lend itself to a particular item or theme easily,

try giving away something practical in the moment. Knit caps are
popular giveaways at Sundance because they’re immediately useful.
So many people misjudge the cold in Park City that they gladly turn
themselves into walking billboards in exchange for the extra warmth.
Make sure your promo items are reusable – at other festivals and/or
by the recipients. Don’t spend money on items you can only give
away at one festival unless the idea is to persuade audience members
to take them as a souvenir of the event. In that case the giveaways
should last long enough that the recipient will advertise your film for
months or years to come.

- Consider how much surface area you’ll be able to use on the item
for your message. Sturdy plastic cups are a promo item I favor
because they’re useful, reusable, cheap, and they offer relatively vast
amounts of printable space. (They are, however, somewhat
inconvenient to carry around in large quantities.) Cigarette lighters
and pens, on the other hand, barely have enough room for a film’s
title and web address.
Once you’ve decided on what your promo item will be, there’s still
work to be done.
- Figure out the required lead time. Most promo items can be printed
in a few weeks but specialty items may take longer. Pre-planning will
help you avoid the ultimate giveaway bummer: a festival without
your promo items, followed by a box of stuff waiting on your
doorstep when you return. That said, it’s best to delay ordering until
your film has actually been programmed at your target festival.
- Figure out what your tchotchkes will cost and do some comparison
shopping. Weigh the cost against the potential benefits and don’t fall
prey to the false economy of bulk discounts unless you really think
you need large quantities. Depending on the size of the festival you
may need a few dozen giveaways instead of hundreds. Don’t forget
to add in the cost and logistics of shipping your widgets to the event.
- Keep in mind that film-branded tchotchkes are ultimately a vanity

item and shouldn’t be viewed as an investment, marketing or
otherwise. A print ad in the festival program guide would
probably be a wiser purchase, though not nearly as much fun. See
chapter 6 for tips on how and when to give your promo items
away.

Make a Trailer
I’ve heard it said that cutting a trailer is a completely different

process from editing a film. Trailers have different goals and
therefore different rules. Not being a film editor myself I defer to
Mike Flanagan, whose article on trailer editing for MicroFilmmaker
Magazine is a trove of great suggestions, including:
Remember that the people watching your trailer haven’t seen your film.
They don’t know how awesome the thing is in its entirety, so you’ve really
got to make sure you put your strongest stuff forward. Use your best shots.
Use your best takes. Avoid shots with bad lighting, shots out of focus, or
other production bungles no matter HOW much you may dig them in the
finished product – sometimes, people are watching these things only for
reasons to AVOID your film.
For a link to the full article visit microfilmmaker.com and look for
Mike’s name in issue 14.
If you have a short film it’s not a bad idea to try making a trailer for
it. It may seem silly given that the trailer can in some cases be almost
as long as the film itself, but get creative and see if you can edit an
effective trailer for your short film. Not only is it good practice for
future pictures, it allows you to promote your film more effectively
on the web without giving away the entire movie.
A few suggestions of my own about trailers:
- Make a few different versions of different lengths. Three minutes

is about the longest a trailer should be, but my favorite trailers are
the really short ones between 30 seconds and a minute. Different
festivals are going to want different lengths of trailer, and it’s not a
bad thing to let visitors to your web site choose for themselves

whether they want to see a trailer that’s short or more in-depth. If
you can’t sell your film in under a minute, it’s doubtful you’ll be able
to sell it in three.
- Don’t narrate. This rule of filmmaking definitely carries over into

trailers: show, don’t tell.
- The rules of music rights still apply. “Because Hollywood films

often recycle film scores for trailers, some filmmakers think trailer
music is free,” notes Chris Magyar, writer and co-director of horror
comedy Make A Killing. “Use your film’s score or pay for the rights
if you want to use something else.”
- Include the web site URL at the end. If someone is watching your
trailer out of context you want them to be able to find your film on
the web for more information.
- Get it on the film festival site if possible. Some festivals provide

each film in their program with a page of its own for information,
stills, and trailers. Alternately they may have a page of trailers for the
festival. Don’t wait for the festival audience find their way to your
web site from the festival site – get your trailer in front of them as
quickly as possible.
- Put your trailer on YouTube and other video sharing sites so that
bloggers and other press can help spread the word by putting your
trailer in front of their audiences.
Create a Clip Reel
More than just a trailer, a clip reel is a tape of distinct scenes from
your film specifically for use by television journalists promoting your
film. The clip reel should contain clips of various lengths with slates

or title cards describing the length and content of each one (e.g. “Car
chase, 3 minutes 10 seconds”). When television stations present a
story on a film festival or specific film, they generally like to narrate
over a scene instead of a trailer (trailers are more distracting than cut
scenes). Your clip reel should make it easy for a TV journalist to select
an appropriate clip to fill the length of time that they plan to describe
your film.
Having a clip reel available online in a number of different hi-

resolution video formats ensures that when the media comes calling,
you’re ready. So few filmmakers arrive at film festivals with clip reels
“in hand” that it’s almost a guaranteed way to ensure that the
footage that represents the festival will be yours.
Who's on Your Team?
When you’re on the ground at a film festival you’ll want to have

some people backing you up. The team will be composed of not just
the cast and crew you take with you, but behind-the-scenes people
and folks back home who will do the things you can’t do easily in the
film festival environment. Your friends and family, your fellow
filmmakers, the festival staff, and hired professionals – they need to
be recruited (or at least researched) before your first festival
acceptance and they need to know what’s expected of them when the
time comes.
Travel Planning
Your festival team – the people you take with you – will largely be a
function of your budget, so unless you’re rolling in cash or frequent

flier miles, keep your fellow filmmakers in the loop when it comes to
festival planning. Let them know to which festivals you’ve
submitted, when those festivals are, and what your budget will allow
when it comes to paying for their travel expenses. That way they can
start making their own arrangements and won’t be surprised when
you say, “We got in – if you want to come you’ll have to pay your
own way.”
Your extended filmmaking family should also be aware that they will
likely have to pay for tickets to their own film and/or a badge to get
access to the parties. This varies from festival to festival (some
festivals give filmmakers an allotment of tickets to their own films or
at least a discount) but it doesn’t hurt to plant the seed of possibility
in the minds of your traveling pals.
Festivals will (almost) always pay the airfare and lodging of a

celebrity actor whose film is playing in their festival. Celebrities
bring in crowds and crowds pay for tickets, so that hotel and plane
fare may seem like a worthwhile investment to a festival looking to
beef up its attendance. If you have a recognizable face in your film
who is willing to show up to the festival screening, don’t hesitate to
play that card. In the process, try negotiating for some extra perks –
an additional badge, an extra night in the hotel room after the actor
has departed – anything that helps defray your own costs. If you’re
bringing value to the festival you shouldn’t be afraid to haggle. Just
don’t take it too far.
When it comes to your own budget, keep in mind that not every
festival pays for filmmaker travel and lodging – those that do are the
exception rather than the rule. Some festivals provide only admission
to the festival for two people per accepted film and that’s it. Take
advantage of the perks that the festival affords you but be prepared
to pay your way beyond that and don’t complain. It’s OK to feel like

you’re dealing with a bunch of cheapskates, but never let on to them
that you think they’re anything but wonderful. You don’t know the
ins and outs of the festival’s finances and you never know where
you’ll encounter these people again. If someone on staff ends up at a
more prestigious festival down the line they may not remember your
awesome short film but they will remember if you were a jerk.
Finally, pick your “plus one” carefully. Film festivals are definitely
more fun with a friend, and in this case that friend should be ready
to help you deal with whatever the festival brings your way. Ideally
this should be someone from the film’s cast or crew with whom
you’re compatible in a travel situation – one of your lead actors,
your DP, your producer – someone with whom you won’t mind
sharing a hotel room and someone who can take the pressure off of
you by answering a few questions about the movie during a Q&A.
Chances are you already tested this relationship during the stress of
shooting a movie, so your friendship should be able to withstand the
pressures of the film festival environment.
Talk to the Professionals
If you’re taking a feature film to the festival circuit with the primary
goal of selling it for theatrical and video distribution, you will need
to involve professionals. That level of involvement should be
proportional to the size of your film’s budget and the amount of
compensation you expect to receive for the picture. Just as it’s your
job to make movies and it’s my job to help filmmakers formulate
festival strategy, there are professionals in the industry who know
how to do things like read contracts and sell films to studios.
Distributors employ these people to make sure they get the best deal
possible; you should do likewise to protect your own interests. The

tricky part is knowing who the good ones are and when to get them
involved.
These professionals include:
- Lawyers. The first non-filmmaker on any production’s payroll, in

my estimation, should be a lawyer. But then I am not a lawyer and
none of the content in this book should be taken as legal advice. The
only person you should trust to advise you on legal matters
pertaining to your particular film is a good entertainment lawyer.
The sooner you get an attorney involved the more likely it is that
they’ll save you money and trouble by preventing legal problems
before they become an issue. Before you sit down with a distributor
you’ll need to know everything about your film from basic music
clearances to E&O insurance. (And if you’ve never heard of E&O
insurance then you should probably pick up the phone soon.)
At the bare minimum you need to have an attorney picked out and
have an initial interview so that when you’re ready for representation
it’s ready for you. If you made your film as a business venture and
you’re intent on selling it at a top tier festival, you’ll need someone
who will either travel with you or will be standing by to review
documents as the festival progresses.
Where to find one: a good lawyer is like a good barber – there’s a lot
of trust involved, so you want someone who comes recommended by
a fellow filmmaker whose opinion you respect. You want someone
who has handled lots of indie films before and has satisfied clients.
Many entertainment lawyers are based in New York or Los Angeles,
but you may be more comfortable with someone local with whom
you can consult in person.

Additional resources:
Mark Litwak’s Entertainment Law Resources (marklitwak.com)
Stacey Davis Entertainment and Intellectual Property Law

(staceydavislaw.com)
The Pocket Lawyer for Filmmakers: A Legal Toolkit for Independent

Producers by Thomas A. Crowell (book)
- Sales Agents. Again, if your feature has a large budget and you
anticipate selling your film at a festival, you’ll want to have a sales
agent on board. Sales agents know who the buyers are in the indie
film market and what they want. Sales agents work on commission
and the best ones represent a number of films at any given time.
Chances are you probably won’t get much traction with any of the
good ones unless you come recommended by a previous client or
until you’re accepted into a top-tier festival. If you are accepted by
Sundance or Toronto, firms like Cinetic and William Morris will
probably start returning your phone calls. Until that time, however,
you might want to wait until you start talking to distributors. A sales
agent can jump in and help out if you’re trying to negotiate the best
deal, but depending on your film and the level of interest you’re
getting you may be able to do just as well with only the help of your
lawyer.
Where to find one: If you get into a top-tier fest, they’ll find you, but
there’s nothing wrong with doing some research and making a few
phone calls once you have that first festival screening date. As with
attorneys, recommendations from other satisfied filmmakers are
important. Always ask for the agency’s references and check up on
them.

- Publicists. Not every filmmaker needs a publicist, but a good one
can pay for himself with the right publicity campaign – particularly if
you feel unable or unwilling to mount such a campaign yourself. No
one will ever know your film like you do, or work as hard to
market that film as you will. I’ve seen determined filmmakers fill
festival screenings, charm the press, and garner industry attention
without publicists, but it’s incredibly hard work and not everyone is
suited to it. Great publicists are entrenched in their chosen industries,
pick only the best films to work with, and have contact lists longer
than King Kong’s arm. They open doors and make things happen.
Bad publicists make themselves unwelcome in delicate situations
and tarnish not only their own reputations but their clients’ as well.
If you think a publicist would be good for you, get some

recommendations (look up the agencies that represent some of your
favorite films that did well) but don’t pull the trigger until you’ve
been accepted to a festival that’s worth the expenditure. If your film
isn’t going to play festivals with heavy industry coverage, even the
best publicist won’t be able to do much for you.
Indie film publicist Lisa Trifone at 11th Street Lot puts it this way:
“When you’re selected for a festival, you’re one of dozens of feature films the
local press will hear about. You could spend your time sending emails to
these strangers and hoping they get read. Or, you could hire a publicist who
can cut through the clutter for you, picking up the phone to pitch a review
to their friend the film critic.”
As an aside: For a festival industry party held in the office where I

worked, our company invited all of the exhibiting filmmakers at the
festival. One group arrived with their publicist in tow, a young lady
who proceeded to plaster the office with the film’s postcards. She
even tucked one in the face of each clock on the walls. At one point

she cornered me at my desk while I was checking on my e-mail and
asked me repeatedly (though not particularly politely) to promise to
come to the picture’s next screening. I deflected the question as best I
could and tried not to look the clearly embarrassed producers in the
eye as the publicist knocked over a drink on her way out. Moral: pick
your publicist carefully and be prepared to pull the plug if it isn’t
working out.
- Festival staff. Obviously these aren’t the professionals you can hire,
but they are professionals and once you’ve been invited to play at a
festival, part of their job is to help you make your screenings
successful. Some fests do a better job than others at supporting their
filmmakers, but you’ll never know what is possible until you ask. See
the next two chapters for more on working with festival staff.
- Consultants, both formal and informal. A festival consultant works

with a filmmaker to formulate festival strategy and to manage the
film’s run on the festival circuit in myriad ways. You may find a
professional consultant to be of service or you may luck into meeting
the right “angel” who can show you the ins and outs of a film festival
just as a way of being friendly. I know the programming director of a
major film festival who pays for his lodging at Sundance each year
by crashing with filmmakers whose films play the festival. With his
insight into the workings of Park City and the festivals there plus his
connections to the film festival world in general, he’s the perfect tour
guide and all he asks in return is some couch space in their rental
condo.
Professional consultants can help to evaluate your film before you

start submitting or provide advice about your film’s future path if
you’ve already started your festival run. If a consultant really likes
your film, she may even be able to get it into other festivals by
recommending it to her festival director contacts. Don’t count on this

though – a recommendation is only as good as the previous films
that person has recommended. If a consultant has a habit of gushing
to festival directors about every film that crosses her desk, her
opinion won’t be worth much.
Now for the Fun Part
With the heavy lifting out of the way, it’s time to concentrate on the
more pleasurable aspects of getting ready for a festival run. There’s a
lot more to a film festival than just the travel and the activities
afforded by your festival badge, so a little work to learn the ropes
and be prepared for the little details of travel and festival life can go a
long way towards making your festival trip a good one.
Attend a Film Festival
“We did a survey this year and it was shocking to discover that only
about 30% of [our] filmmakers said they had attended a festival in
the last year as an audience member – with only five or six of those
saying they had attended more than one,” says Charles Judson at
Terminus. If you’ve never been to a film festival before, you’re setting
yourself up for twice as much trouble as you need to: not only will
you be trying to manage the business of marketing your film, but
you’ll also be learning the daily rhythm of a film festival as a
complete newbie.
Go to a local film festival or take a trip to one of the big ones. This is a
business research trip and you should treat it as such. It’s OK to have
fun, but the primary objective is to collect information about how
festivals work.

Take it all in: watch the way the audience behaves before, during and
after each screening. Observe the interaction between the filmmakers
and the festival staff and volunteers. Peek behind the curtain and talk
to the projectionist about the unique challenges of conducting a
hundred or more one-off screenings. (Maybe you can do that part
when he’s not working – offer to buy him a drink after his shift.)
Take notes and decide for yourself how you’ll handle the situations
you observe when it’s your film up on the screen.
Don’t forget to make friends with some of the exhibiting filmmakers

– just walk up after the Q&A and introduce yourself. For the price of
a drink and some polite conversation you can gain a wealth of
information about the festival you’re attending and how it compares
to other festivals where that filmmaker has played.
For extra credit, volunteer to work at a film festival and get to know
festival life from the inside out. Volunteers typically work a few
shifts during the festival in exchange for a badge or a pass. You may
also be able to volunteer before the festival in order to have free time
at the fest itself. Make yourself useful enough and you’ll have a
contact or two to call upon when you’re ready to submit your own
film.

- Once you start submitting, you will probably wait long stretches of
time to hear anything. Use that time wisely to prepare your film and
your team for the events to come.
- Create a visual identity for your film’s marketing and document it.
- Design and print business cards.
- Build a web site for your film, including lots of text, pictures, and
video. Make sure it includes your contact info and try to engage your
audience through regularly updated features like a blog, mailing
lists, and profiles on social networking sites.
- Decide what printed materials are appropriate for your film and
design them to be ready to print when you are accepted by a festival.
- Brainstorm ideas for promotional giveaways if appropriate and

research the costs and production time.
- Create trailers and a clip reel for your film.
- Establish your festival support team, including friends and family,

cast and crew, and the professionals necessary to accomplish your
goals.
- Attend a film festival and learn as much as you can about how they
work. If possible, work as a volunteer.

Chapter 4 - When You Get the
Call
When You're Accepted
You’ve waited weeks. Maybe even months. Rejection letters may

have piled up in your inbox. Whether your first acceptance comes
from a festival on your top tier or somewhere below, the thrill of that
first notification is pretty much the same. Now is not the time to lose
your cool, though – the real work is about to start. Pay attention.
Every festival programmer notifies their selected filmmakers in their

own way. Most commonly it comes by email, though some festivals
still make an initial phone call. Some festivals even go old school
with postal mail for the first notification. Whatever the delivery
method, the message is the same: Congratulations! You’re in.
First Contact
When you get that congratulatory email, respond right away and
follow the instructions you’ve been given. A well-run festival will
tell you everything you need to know, or give you some idea of when
to expect further details. Follow-up questions by email are acceptable
but there may be some delay in getting answers.
If you get a phone call from a human, here are some handy tips:
- Keep it together. You can be excited and show enthusiasm, but

there’s some important information you’ll need to gather during this
call and you don’t want it to slip away. If you got a phone call, pull
over to the side of the road (important calls inevitably come at the
worst times), open your festival notebook, and get ready to write.
Chapter 4: When You Get the Call 123

- Say thank you. If you’re on the phone, let the programmer know
that you’re flattered to be included. Then shut up.
- Save your questions. Most programmers have done a few of these

calls and they know what needs to be said, so wait to ask questions
until she’s done. She’ll probably tell you all you need to know before
you ask.
- Determine the festival’s needs. Once you’ve gotten the spiel, ask
what the festival needs from you right away. If she’s already told
you, repeat the requirements back and ask for the deadlines. Write it
all down.
- Ask if you should expect a “welcome packet” – some festivals

send out information to their filmmakers to let them know what the
festival offers and other practical advice. Find out when you should
expect it and how it will arrive so that if it doesn’t come in you will
know to ask after it.
- Find out when you’re allowed to announce that your movie will
play the festival. Some fests keep a stranglehold on their programs
until a press conference or similar unveiling; others are happy to
have you start promoting right away. If you need to wait, mark the
date on your calendar.
- If necessary, schedule a follow-up call. Now is not the time for the
million questions running through your head. The programmer
probably has more of these calls to make today, so ask when the best
time would be to talk again. Make it clear that you’ll want to discuss
marketing and logistics so she can be prepared. Write down the date
for the follow-up call, and be sure to get the programmer’s name, e-
mail address, and phone number.

- Say thank you again and hang up.
“For a lot of programmers, acceptance calls are a highlight of the job. In the
end they are hoping to help start these filmmakers’ careers and get
filmmakers recognition for their work. So I think seeing someone’s
excitement is key to feeling like they are on the right track – with
programming, with accepting that certain film, and feeling that the
filmmaker is ‘in it to win it.’”
–Linnea Toney, former Conference Director, Austin Film Festival
Send a Thank-You Note
This is one of those simple things that no one does anymore. Even
the film festivals themselves, who used to make all notifications by
regular post, have largely moved over to e-mail for rejections and
telephone for acceptances. With pen-and-paper correspondence so
far out of daily use, it’s pretty easy to make this guarantee: if you
write a thank-you note in your own handwriting, shove it in an
envelope with a stamp, and send it to the festival programmer, you
will make a big impression. You’ll probably be the only filmmaker
who does so. Could there be an easier way to stand out?
Here, I’ll even give you the text. Let’s assume your film “Eating
Cheese” been accepted to the SuperDuper Film Festival and the
programmer, Bill, called you to break the news. Of course you
thanked him on the phone, but a few days later you follow up with
this note:

Dear Bill,
Thank you so much for programming “Eating Cheese” at

the upcoming SuperDuper Film Festival and for calling
me personally to let me know. I know you received
hundreds of other films so it is especially gratifying
to know that you chose “Eating Cheese” as one of the
few to fit in your lineup this year. I look forward to
meeting you at the festival in a few months and if
there’s anything you need in the meantime please let me
know.
Sincerely,
(Your name - sign legibly)
Why seek to make a good impression after you’ve already been

accepted to the festival? This is the beginning of what could be a long
and beneficial relationship for you both. Festival programming is
regarded as a glamorous job but for most of them it’s actually a grind
– lots of work, not much pay, and constant requests for favors from
people they barely know. Show some consideration for Bill’s
unenviable position and he’ll be more likely to grant you those
favors. Maybe he’ll even pass your name on to some other
programmers he knows – and in a year when you’re ready to submit
your next film, Bill will remember how much he likes you. Of course
a simple thank-you note guarantees none of these things, but it’s a
good start.
Delivery Details
One of the most important details you’ll need to clarify right away is
how the festival wants your film delivered. The submission
application should have mentioned the festival’s projection formats,
so confirm your available format and be sure to send the “print” (the

DCP, digital file, or Blu-Ray mentioned in chapter 1) in time to meet
the festival’s deadline. The event’s production manager (the person
in charge of print traffic) will curse your name if you push it to the
last minute, so save him the stress.
The festival may also ask you for permission to share your online
screener with the press or jury members. If you’re feeling particularly
paranoid, prepare an online screening copy particularly for this
purpose so you can change the password periodically without
interrupting other festivals’ access to your main submissions
screener.
In the event that you need to physically ship a hard drive, this is not
the time to skimp on shipping. Send your print via UPS, FedEx, or
some other shipping company with internet-traceable tracking
numbers. Plan ahead so you can send by ground instead of
overnight, but definitely get that tracking number and a guaranteed
delivery date.
Be sure to ask if the festival will cover the second leg of shipping,
either to get the print back to you or to send it forward to the next
fest. Some will, some won’t, but it’s important to confirm.
Award Eligibility
In order to properly plan your festival marketing and awards

strategy, you need to know where your film stands in relation to the
other films in the festival.
Some festivals separate the films “in competition” (those eligible for
awards from the festival jury) from the “non-competition” or “out of
competition” movies. Non-competition films are sometimes eligible

for audience awards based on viewer voting. Sometimes every film
in the festival is eligible for jury awards. It really depends on how
your particular festival is run.
Figure out what your eligibility is so you’ll know whether to

encourage attendees to vote for your film and how much sucking up
to the jury you should do.
Travel Arrangements
Most of the benefits to be had from playing film festivals comes from
traveling with your film to the larger events where it plays – even if
your film’s “larger” fests are small. Later in your festival run you
may decide that you don’t need to follow your film to every mom-n-
pop festival out there, but in the beginning you definitely want to be
there to soak in the positive audience reactions and to make
connections.
If the festival programmer doesn’t mention details on covering your

travel expenses in the first phone call or in your welcome packet,
they probably can’t offer to do so. If travel expenses are truly out of
your reach, don’t be afraid to ask what the festival can do to help. In
the best case such assistance means comped hotel rooms, plane
tickets, or meal vouchers. If those aren’t available you may find that
the festival has some creative ways to help filmmakers get to the
events and put roofs over their heads each night. (It helps that most
indie filmmakers seeking assistance are a young bunch who don’t
mind sleeping on couches or stuffing themselves into coach-class
middle seats.)
“Our festival commits itself each year to find local host families for all
accepted filmmakers attending in order to help with travel costs and to

provide a more meaningful experience. As our filmmakers predominantly
make art-driven short films, they generally do not have travel budgets with
their projects. For many the AAFF represents one of the top forums for their
work and it’s important to attend in person and engage with an enthusiastic
community. We are fortunate to have many supporters within walking
distance of downtown Ann Arbor who provide wonderful hospitality to
filmmakers from all over the world. Hosts receive a full festival pass and
sometimes create long-lasting relationships with the filmmakers they meet.”
- Donald Harrison, former Executive Director, Ann Arbor

Film Festival
Once you know what (if any) freebies you can throw into the mix,
alert your plus-one and Mission Control that it’s time to gear up and
use the permanent marker on the festival’s dates. If you plan on
being at the festival for its full duration you can go ahead and start
booking hotel and plane tickets. If you can only afford to be there for
a few days, however, you should find out when your film will be
playing and try to be there for both screenings. (This assumes a
week-long festival with two screenings for your film, which is typical
for larger fests.) Some fests don’t announce their screening schedules
until a few weeks in advance so the timing may get dicey and you’ll
end up making a guess. Stay in touch with the festival staff, get the
best information you can, and book when the time is right.
Your cast and crew probably won’t want to travel to every festival
where the film plays, but you should let them know about every
acceptance so they have the option. Even if they don’t go they may
know someone in your destination city who can put you up or act as
a guide while you’re there.
Other creative ways of saving on travel:

- Explore your extended network. If you don’t have friends or family
in your destination city, try asking if there are people they know who
might be willing to put you up. Film fans enjoy being associated with
festivals by proxy; hosting a scrappy band of indie filmmakers may
be someone’s idea of a good time. Of course you’ll want to reward
their hospitality with some free tickets to your film or a similar token.
- Couchsurfing.com. If couchsurfing through personal contacts

doesn’t work for you, try Couchsurfing.com, which formalizes the
process in an eBay-like way, including background checks and
reviews of both hosts and guests.
- Additional investment/sponsorship. If you were able to convince

investors to give you money for your film, you might be able to use
those powers of persuasion to find additional investment money for
a travel budget. Similarly, an airline or other corporation might
sponsor your trip to Tribeca in exchange for logo placement on your
hat or shirt during Q&As and photo opportunities.
- Government grants. If your film features a certain locale

prominently, your local government and/or film commission may be
willing to sponsor your trip as a way of promoting that state or
province as a filmmaking location. For example, Canadian
filmmakers can apply to the Canada Council for the Arts for a travel
grant to one festival per year, so long as your film has been officially
selected to play in that festival.
- Other filmmakers. If you’ve played a number of festivals already,

try reaching out to your previous festival contacts to see if any of
them live in the area of your latest fest or can recommend
particularly cheap lodging. Of course you need to be ready to
reciprocate if they come to your town.

- Your fans. Reach out to the fans who signed up on your mailing
list, some might be willing to donate cash or airline tickets earned
through frequent flier miles to your cause. If you funded your film
through a crowdfunding platform, consider going back to your
hardest of hard core fans to ask for more help.
Though it might sound weird or opportunistic at first, think of it this

way: you told your crowdfunding backers you’d take their money
and make a movie with it. Not only did you follow through, you did
such a good job that the film is now playing festivals. At least some
of your true fans will want to help you on the next leg of your
journey by helping your film find even more fans.
- Sell merchandise on your site or at fests – ask the festival if it’s OK

to sell t-shirts, hats, etc. at the event. Don’t be shy about asking
festival attendees who enjoy the movie (they’re the ones who stick
around for the Q&A) to help support your festival travels by buying
something. You can even sell DVDs or downloads of your prior
work… just don’t sell copies of your current project.
When You Have to Say No
There may be times, particularly at the very beginning of your

festival run, when you’ll need to decline the invitation to play at a
festival. If you followed the college application model of submitting
and applied to a few safety festivals, it’s possible that one of those
less prestigious fests will get back to you with an acceptance letter
sooner than the larger ones. With your world premiere on the line,
you will want to know whether the larger festival (let’s call it Festival
A) accepted your film or not before you commit to the safety fest
(Festival B). This can make for some awkward phone calls, but you
can minimize that awkwardness by taking a few steps.

- Decide ahead of time on your terms of acceptance. If Festival B has
play dates later in the year than Festival A, then realistically you can
play both. It’s important to decide, however, whether your Festival B
acceptance really depends on what Festival A says. If your plan is to
pursue Festival C (another large festival on par with festival A) in the
event that Festival A says no, think carefully about taking advantage
of Festival B’s offer while it still stands.
- Be honest about the situation. Don’t accept now, only to have to

withdraw your film later. Let the programmer know that you’re still
waiting to hear from another festival before you commit and ask
when the very latest date is that he needs to hear from you.
- Reassure the programmer that you submitted to his festival

because you felt like it would be a good fit, but you want to do right
by your film. Missing out on the opportunity to play Festival A
would be foolish, and the programmer for Festival B knows it.
Chances are a number of great films cross his desk every year that
end up playing at Festival A instead. Your honesty and flattery will
help to preserve the relationship with Festival B.
- Keep the lines of communication open. If Festival B asks for an

update respond promptly, but don’t overcompensate by calling or
sending e-mail every other day.
- Don’t let Festival B pressure you. The better festivals won’t resort
to this tactic but there are programmers out there who will employ
high-pressure tactics to get you commit. Take it as a good sign that a
festival wants your film so badly and you can file the info away in
your notebook, but don’t give in and don’t burn any bridges just yet.
Keep in mind that the festival may simply call your bluff and move
on to another film to fill your slot.

- Deliver your decision to Festival B as quickly as you can. As soon
as you hear back from Festival A, figure out your next steps and give
Festival B a call immediately. It’s better to answer with a decisive
“no” earlier in game than to string the festival along until the very
last minute.
Awkward situations like these are why the festival pyramid exists.
It’s OK to submit to festivals in parallel, but try to keep them all
mostly in the same tier to start.
Festivals generally care far less about the premiere status of shorts
than features. If a medium or even small festival accepts your short
sooner than one of your top tier festivals does, there’s little harm to
be done by playing the smaller festival first. If you want to be
cautious about it you can offer the smaller festival a “work in
progress” or “advance sneak” screening that won’t be the world
premiere and they’ll probably take you up on it.

- When a festival accepts your film, there’s a lot to take in. Keep your
cool, stay organized, and execute the plan.
- Send a thank- you note.
- Get the festival’s delivery details and (if sending physical media)
use a reliable shipper with a tracking system.
- Find out your film’s award eligibility during the festival.
- Traveling with your film is important, at least for a while. Find out
of the festival can help you; if not there are a number of creative
ways that you can save money on travel.
- The politics of the festival circuit are such that you may have to say
no to a festival that extends your film an invitation. Be honest and
realistic when turning down such invitations. Do your best to
preserve the relationship with that festival.

Chapter 5 - The Pre-Festival
Push
The Pre-Festival Push
With the possible exception of the festival itself, this is probably the
portion of your festival run during which you will be the busiest. Not
only do you need to fulfill the requirements of the festival by
delivering a projection print and cooperating with their marketing
efforts, but you also need to figure out your own travel logistics. On
top of that is the hardest job of all: making sure your screenings are
packed to the gills by conducting a marketing campaign, usually
from another city. This is where all that prep we did in chapter 3
really pays off, but there’s still a lot to be done, so let’s get started.
Confirming Festival Logistics
- Make sure that you fulfill all the festival’s requirements regarding
the delivery of your print. Do this first to get it out of the way - mark
out the plan and delegate if possible. Put it in your notebook, on your
calendar, make sure that committing this print to this festival doesn’t
conflict with another festival engagement. (Not a problem if this is
your first festival, obviously, but it can quickly become an issue
unless you invest in multiple prints.) If possible get the last festival
where your film played to ship the print forward to the next. (As
mentioned previously, it’s customary for festivals to pay for print
shipping in one direction but not guaranteed.) A production manager
of your own who can track things like this is ideal, but oftentimes
that person is you.
- Confirm, confirm, confirm. Keep tracking numbers. Make sure to

get the name, e-mail address, and if possible phone number of the
person responsible for print traffic at the festival.
Chapter 5: The Pre-Festival Push 137

- Work with the festival’s marketing staff to figure out what they
want from you (typically digital media, screeners, press kits, posters).
The festival will make these available in a central place for the media
but it’s highly unlikely that they perform the functions of a street
team for your film. If you want your posters plastered all over town,
that’s something you need to do for yourself.
Confirm Travel Arrangements
- Get organized about your travel and your appointments.

Resources abound for putting your life on the road in order. Take
advantage of them. The less you have to think about your itinerary
and its details, the more brain space you’ll have for promoting
yourself and your film. For more on this see chapter 3 and the web
site travel page.
- If you don’t know your destination very well, get a good city guide
and study it beforehand. I like the smaller guides that fit in a back
pocket, but go with what appeals to you. Just make sure you carry it
with you. Find out what you can about the festival from the audience
perspective, particularly the venues and their locations. You’ll want
to know which venues are within easy walking distance and which
aren’t. Some festivals are lucky enough to have whole cultures built
up around them — there may be existing tools like interactive maps
etc that will help you figure out the festival and its surroundings.
- Research the locations and phone numbers of useful businesses

near the festival - Fed-Ex/Kinko’s, ATMs from your bank,
restaurants you want to visit, local landmarks — and put them in
your festival notebook. Put their phone numbers in your phone’s
address book so you can dial them quickly. If your phone allows you
to arrange contacts together in a group, try creating a festival group
for easy access.

Packing the House
Picture it: your world premiere. Every seat is packed and there is an
excited chatter from the crowd. Your cast and crew are terrified and
elated at the same time. Somewhere out there in the half-lit audience
are the critics, bloggers, festival directors, and industry execs who
could make your career. The festival programmer introduces your
film, encourages the audience to stay for the Q&A, and thanks a few
sponsors. Your heart jumps against the back of your teeth as the
lights go down.
Now picture it a different way. There’s a crowd, all right, but it’s
headed for the theater across the hall. Somehow you got
programmed against a film which has massive buzz at the festival.
Their buttons and stickers are everywhere and somehow they scored
a positive review in the local alternative weekly, so now everyone
wants to see it. A few curious badgeholders are shuffling into the
seats for your picture but the majority of your audience is composed
of your friends and family. Maybe you can pick up a few people
when the other film starts turning them away? Your heart sinks to
your knees as the lights go down.
The first scenario is obviously the desired one for everyone on the
festival circuit – few things are quite as impressive in this context as
the words “sold-out screenings.” The latter course of events is where
all too many filmmakers find themselves, especially their first time
out. What makes the difference between an evening to remember and
a night to forget?
Unfortunately, there are many events outside your control that can
dictate the size of audience turnout: weather, competing local events
(including other films at the same festival), venue location, screening
time, and a host of other factors. Your job is to prevent such calamity

by mitigating those factors and applying marketing techniques to
overwhelm them. You need a sell-out plan.
Get Creative, Get Specific
You should already have most of the elements of your sell-out plan
in place: your web site, designs for your printed material, your
tchotchkes, etc. Now it’s time to tailor those generic ideas to the
festival at hand and create a specific plan for getting the attendees to
choose watching your movie over the other movies playing at the
same time – and, for that matter, over the million other things
happening in that city on that day.
The key to putting butts in seats is to make your screening more than
just a movie. It needs to be an event. A movie you can watch any
time, right? “I’ll catch it on Netflix.” A movie with that little
something extra accompanying it, however, happens only once – or
rarely enough that you feel motivated to go see it that night. As a
filmmaker, you want to instill that sense of urgency in the moviegoer.
If you want them to show up, they need to believe that they will have
just this one chance to see this event.
What Is That Little Something Extra?
If you’re lucky enough to have some recognizable faces in your cast,

you’re ahead of the game. (You probably knew that already.)
Depending on the actor, just that person’s presence may be enough to
draw a sell-out crowd without further work on your part. It’s risky to
pin your entire strategy on the one person, though – actors have
notoriously fluid schedules and the possibility of a cancellation
looms large. If star power is a major component of your sell-out plan,

I recommend you get a commitment from the actor etched in stone.
Escort them personally to the festival city, and then baby-sit them
until the screening. Anything else is just asking for trouble.
Beyond the obvious draw of a famous face, there are plenty of things
you can do to make your screening special. Some involve an element
of live performance, while others offer more physical rewards. They
can be serious, silly, or downright absurd. William Castle was the
absolute master of the event-driven film in the 1960s – not that you
should start wiring theater seats with buzzers, but his showmanship
drew crowds in a way that the films themselves never could have.
Whatever you do it should either be something splashy and fun or
something of intense interest to your target audience – a target
audience large enough to fill a theater, preferably.
It’s impossible to give specific advice about this without knowing the
specifics of your film, but here are a few rules of thumb and a few
examples from actual campaigns I’ve seen or helped to create at
festivals.
- If your film involves fancy costuming or special effects (particularly

fantasy & sci-fi films), deliver your cast in costume or provide an
exhibit of the props and models.
- If your film profiles a particular skill or talent that lends itself to

visual display, bring along some of the practitioners of that skill.
Bring some of the folks from your movie if you can, but if not
someone who can demonstrate the skill will do. At (the now defunct
and badly-missed) CineVegas in 2008 the producers of Last Cup: Road
to the World Series of Beer Pong created a stir by flying in a number of
the competitors from the film. Not only were they on hand to answer
questions but the whole audience moved to a nearby ballroom where

beer pong tables were set up and audience members could test their
skill against the champs.
- Hold a contest. If you can’t bring in the beer pong champs, at least
set up some beer pong tables (whatever your film’s equivalent is,
anyway) and let people compete for a prize of some sort. If your
film’s theme doesn’t lend itself easily to a contest, don’t fake it – a
generic raffle isn’t going to excite anyone unless you’re giving away
a car.
- Experts - Inviting an expert to speak on your film’s subject

(especially one who is well-known in their field) is a great way to
attract people to your screening. The crowd may be there to see the
expert, but they have to watch your film first. Chances are they’ll like
what they see and tell their friends. Be sure to get your specialist to
agree that you can use her name to promote the screening.
- Stir up some controversy. Maybe your film contains some

contentious issues – why not find the local authorities on those issues
and let them know about your screening? A spirited debate may be
just the thing to liven up the evening. If you can get someone to
decry your film’s screening, so much the better; it will be easier to get
the press involved when they smell conflict.
Be sure to check in with the festival to make sure this is OK – if

they’re caught by surprise it’s possible the event’s organizers could
fold under the pressure and cancel your screening. That’s an extreme
scenario, but it has happened.
- Get creative. There are so many ways to turn a mere screening into
an event that you’re bound to come up with something. Whatever
you do, get the festival staff and the venue management involved so
there are no surprises. Getting the Humane Society to bring dogs to

your film about rescue hounds may sound like a good idea, but the
theater’s health code may have something different to say. In a case
like this, try to find a happy compromise (maybe the dogs can greet
attendees outside).
If you’re presenting a short film at a festival, you may find yourself

with less influence over your attendance figures. It’s tough to get
people to commit to an entire shorts program based on one film. That
doesn’t mean you should give up, just be aware that it’s an uphill
climb. Consider banding together with other shorts filmmakers in
attendance to build “brand awareness” for the program you’re in.
Apply the principles in this chapter to your short as best you can but
don’t beat yourself up if people seem more interested in the feature
films.
Bring Your Own Audience
Much of the previous advice has been concentrated on taking

advantage of the existing festival audience. In some circumstances –
for example, if the festival locale is small enough or remote enough –
that may be all you have to work with. In most cases, however,
there’s a vast untapped audience in the city surrounding the festival.
These are people who wouldn’t ordinarily come to the film festival or
may not even know it exists, but some number of them have an
interest in the subject matter of your film and will buy a ticket for it.
The hard part is identifying who those people are and how to reach
them – we’ll cover that in the next few sections.
If you bring your own audience you won’t have to worry about what
film plays at the same time yours does because you’re not competing
(as much) for their attention. Naturally there will be hard-core
attendees of the festival at your screenings and you want to market

to them because they’re easier to reach. The idea is to whip both
groups up into such a frenzy of anticipation that there isn’t room for
everyone who shows up. Sold out means turning people away, which
is a good thing. You might think that more people seeing your film at
a festival is better, but if your film is so popular that people can’t get
into it then that word of mouth reflects well on your film too.
What if there’s nothing “special” about my film? At this point you

may be thinking that your film isn’t the kind that can be marketed to
special interests. Sure, this exercise is easier with a documentary than
it is with a romantic comedy, but the principles are the same. Who
are the people in the film? Where are they from, where do they live?
What do they like to eat? What do they do for a living? What sports
do they play? What music do they listen to? All of these things and
more are potential special interests to which your film caters. People
like to see themselves on screen, so figure out who you’ve got on
your screen and go out and find those people.
Research Special Interest Groups
Now that you’ve identified your audience, it’s time to find out where
they live. Metaphorically, anyway. Many filmmakers assume that
they have to build their networks from the ground up. The key to
niche marketing, however, is to find out how the members of your
special-interest audience communicate with one another already and
then insert yourself there – politely.
- Find local organizations around your special interests with big

mailing lists and social media followings, then approach them with
news about your film’s screening. Do not try to intrude on their

Facebook page to send out the news yourself; you’ll be viewed as a
spammer with no interest in contributing to the community.
Instead, approach the group leader by phone or e-mail and explain

your desire to provide the community with the opportunity to see a
film that represents their interest. Offer the group leader a link to the
screener and (if possible) a couple of free tickets to the show in their
town. Such news coming from the group leader has instant
credibility and will get much more attention.
If your film deals heavily in the special interest (like maybe it’s a doc
about that interest) you may already have connections to the
community on a national level or in a different locale. Capitalize on
those connections to make contact with the group leader in your
festival’s town; if your film comes recommended by another
authority you’ll have an easier time getting help to promote it. Get a
commitment from your contacts that they will send out one or more
messages to the community and confirm the date they plan to do that
so you can be on the lookout for increased web traffic and questions
from the community.
- Diversify your promotional efforts across communities within the

same special interest. If your film is about stray dogs, don’t settle for
an alliance with the Humane Society alone. Get other animal rescue
groups involved and give them all a chance to help. You can
reciprocate by offering to help them get their messages out to the
moviegoers at the screening. (Let them bring literature or act as an
expert during the Q&A.)
- Diversify your promotional efforts across interests. A

documentary about cats who make cheese should appeal not only to
lovers of the feline species but also connoisseurs of cheese. Make sure
you reach out to both groups.

- If there’s a local newsletter, magazine, or blog about the interest
(and you have time before their print deadline) consider paying for a
small ad to promote the screening. Not only will you raise the film’s
profile in the community but you may also be buying a bit of
goodwill from the publisher, who may help you in other ways.
- During your outreach to the local community, you may find a local
“angel” volunteer who can assist you on the ground. This person
may be able to help reach out personally to local enthusiasts and
media, help with distributing printed material before you arrive, etc.
Angels are few and far between (especially if they haven’t seen your
film yet!), so take advantage and then be prepared to make your
appreciation known with free screening tickets, big grins, and drinks.
Research the Media
We lump it under one name, “the media,” but there are so many
different factions within that it’s easy to become confused about the
different rules for dealing with each. A few items for your to-do list
when it comes to researching your media options for a particular
festival:
- Start a list of media prospects with three tiers: strong prospects,

maybes, and long shots.
- Find the people who did previews and reviews of the same
festival last year. It shouldn’t be hard with a little Googling,
particularly if you start with Google News. In the case of regional
festivals, these people are often local film bloggers who are invested
in their local festivals and write about them at length. Writers who

covered the festival last year are among your top prospects, so put
them up top.
-Get input from the festival on which local radio, TV, and
newspapers gave the festival coverage last year. Often the festival
will arrange interviews for the local broadcast media so make sure
they know that you’re interested and available. Put these folks in
your top tier.
- Think about local reporters with beats outside of entertainment

and film who might be interested in your film’s subject. A film about
baseball might have more traction with (and get a better response
from) a sports reporter than with the local film critic. If your film is
mentioned in the sports section it’s also more likely to reach people
outside the typical festival audience. These reporters are in your top
tier.
- If the festival is large enough (or simply organized enough) to have

an industry directory, take advantage of it. Not only should
attending press be listed, but you can also figure out which industry
execs and festival directors will be in the crowd – information we’ll
put to use later in this chapter. Put the reporters from your industry
directory search in the “strong prospects” list.
- Film blogs and publications (including the big national outlets like
Variety) that cover other festivals should go in the “maybe” list. If
they don’t have a reporter covering that particular festival it’s
unlikely that they’ll give you much time but it’s worth a try. This can
be a pretty big list but don’t go nuts.
» National publications about your subject matter (such as Cat

Fancy for our imaginary cats-who-make-cheese doc) but don’t
normally cover film should also be on the “maybe” list.

» National mainstream press outlets like Entertainment Weekly and
CNN should go on the “longshots” list, unless Wolf Blitzer executive
produced your film.
Make Media Contact
For the people on your strong prospects list, start contacting them
directly. By e-mail at first, but follow up by phone. This can be a
laborious process, but you want to find the live wires (people who
respond right away to your film or to you personally) as quickly as
possible and weed out the journalists who have no interest.
Once you have a handful of people who have agreed to at least give
your film a look, send out some digital press kits and screeners.
These people need to know about your web site, your screening
times at the festival, and the fact that you’ll be in town for the event.
Offer to make anyone from the film available for interview by phone
or in person (especially prominent cast members, if you can swing
that). Don’t forget to tell them about your “something extra” during
your screening so they have extra incentive to show up at the
screening itself.
If this is your feature’s world premiere then it might be wise to hold

back on the screeners. Sometimes a cloak of mystery is a good thing.
Get the festival’s opinion before you make a decision – like you they
want butts in seats and the media covering the actual event, but there
may be reasons to let screeners out there ahead of the big debut.
Once you’ve had your world premiere, however, there’s not much
reason to hold back screeners from the press.

Your “maybe” prospects should get an e-mail with the text of your
film’s festival press release in the body of the email (see the section
on press kits in chapter 3) and an offer to forward more information
on request. If you get a response from any of these you can bump
them up to your strong prospects list but otherwise don’t waste a lot
of time chasing these folks down when you have strong prospects
who need your attention.
The “longshots” list can certainly receive an initial e-mail press

release from you for your world premiere, but throwing effort at
these is mostly futile. What you can do with these prospects is some
deep research: do you know anyone who knows a reporter at one of
these publications/outlets? Is there a journalist who did a story
recently that relates to your film? Approaching a specific person with
a topic in which they’ve already shown an interest is a much better
How much should I hustle to get people to come see my short film?
In my opinion, creators of short films should do less work convincing individual

attendees to come see their movies and concentrate more on making
professional connections. It’s difficult to convince anyone to come to a program
of short films based on a single picture and practically impossible to track who
showed up to see your film as opposed to the ten others in the block.
way to make meaningful contact than throwing generic press

releases at an e-mail address intended for general inquiries.
Make as many media contacts as you can to line up those interviews

prior to your arrival in the festival city. Sometimes you can do an
interview by phone and have the coverage waiting there for you
when you arrive. Don’t be discouraged by a lack of immediate
results; sometimes journalists can’t devote time to a festival until it’s
actually upon them. The keys are to cast a wide net and to be
persistent.

Promoting your short? Your short film is your cinematic business
card to the world. If you clutch your screeners too tightly you’re
defeating the purpose – especially if the someone who wants to see it
is a journalist! Shorts don’t get much media attention so jump at the
chance to get some coverage for yours.
Research the Festival
You’ve already arranged to make a splash at your screening, but it

may be necessary to make a splash at someone else’s – well, sort of.
I’m not saying you should crash someone else’s screening with a
publicity stunt, but those periods of time during which people wait
in line for a movie are prime marketing moments. Get out there and
take advantage of them.
Part of your festival research is to find out where the largest

gatherings of people will be prior to your screenings. That’s where
you want to concentrate your marketing efforts: registration lines,
big screenings at the large venues (opening night is a prime target),
parties, etc. Public spaces are best and you should be outside if you
plan to make a lot of noise, but the most important thing is to be
somewhere with a lot of festival attendees milling about.
Figure out how to attract attention at the gathering — if you have

recognizable faces in your cast, take advantage. Otherwise do
something that will make people turn your way and wonder what’s
going on. Maybe it’s as simple as having everyone in your team at
the festival dress in the same “uniform” — film t-shirts with a catchy
slogan. Or maybe you want something grandiose – your Mexican
love story might call for a mariachi band. Once you start snagging

the attentions of individual fest attendees, make sure your team is
there to hand out fliers for your film and to explain the connection.
(More on working the crowd in the next chapter.)
If your marketing efforts will be splashy or visually intriguing, alert

local TV & print media for photos or coverage. At the very least take
some photos of your own so you can show them off to the media you
meet later. It’s so difficult to make film festivals look exciting that
they may ask to use your photos. I once had a reporter from Variety
ask for my pocket camera snapshots for later inclusion on the web
site – not bad for impromptu photography.
Other items on your festival research list:
- Find out where and when you’ll be playing as soon as possible,

and then find out what that means in terms of natural audience
attendance. You may need to find someone who’s been to that film
festival a few times and can tell you that. The festival may be
reluctant to admit that they stuck you in one of the more remote
venues. See the “common problems” section later in this chapter for
more on this.
- Find out where the best hotel bars are within walking distance.
Not only are they great meeting places but they’re also a great place
to accidentally-on-purpose bump into industry types.
- Inquire with the festival to find out if you can buy some tickets to
the show and rope off a VIP section. This is for people in the press
and industry you’ll meet both before and during the festival. (More
on this in the next chapter.)

Order Printed Material
It’s time to order those postcards and flyers if you haven’t already.
First thing: confirm your screening dates and venues. Quantity will
depend on how many overall attendees there are at the festival and
how large a venue your film will play, and of course on your budget.
I usually advise buying as many postcards as you can reasonably
afford well in advance, and then customizing them with printed
labels bearing your screening times & venues. This can be a time-
consuming process but it’s much more cost-conscious than printing
customized postcards each time. As a quick example of the
economies of scale, you can typically get 1000 postcards for about
$100 or 10,000 postcards for about $400. That’s a decrease from 10¢
per postcard to 4¢.
If you had the foresight to leave room for a label on your postcards,
consider purchasing a small label printer that you can take with you
to festivals. Dymo (dymo.com) makes a nice line of super-portable
USB label printers that don’t even require ink refills. The thermal
labels they print on are somewhat more expensive than cheap laser
labels, but if your screening times unexpectedly change you’ll have
the ability to run back to your hotel room and re-label a mess of
postcards.
Customized flyers, on the other hand, should be cheap enough to

produce at any quantity, so get cracking and put your screening
times & places in big bold type and hit the local copy center. This is
also a good time to assemble those press kits (if you’ve decided to
make them) and make sure you’ve got anything else you opted to
print up (posters, tchotchkes, whatever) in hand.

Start Marketing
Now that you’ve got all of the pieces in place, reach out to those
contacts. It’s time to start the e-mail and phone call blitz to your
media, industry, and personal contacts to let them know that your
film will be in the festival. Update the web site. Blog about it. Send a
message to your mailing list subscribers. In short, go nuts telling the
world about your film’s festival dates.
Your marketing messages should all contain the following:
• The film’s screening dates during the festival

• The festival’s location (people will ask)
• A short synopsis
• A description of your special event plans (special guests,
etc.)
• The URLs for your web site and the festival’s site
• Your contact info
If your first marketing push takes place a ways out from the festival
dates (more than a month), consider a second push closer to the
actual screenings. A reminder of the upcoming event one to two
weeks out is appropriate, especially if you have gotten a positive
response from your initial marketing volley.
Apart from the media and special interest groups, check in with the
manager of the venue where your film will play. Independent
theaters where festivals typically play have web sites (and, more
frequently these days, social media accounts) where they promote
their upcoming shows. They may respond positively to a filmmaker
who approaches them and offers additional marketing support in the
form of an interview or embeddable trailer.

Local film societies, too, may have some interaction with the festival
already but it never hurts to raise your profile above that of the mass
of films at the festival. You’re looking for anyone with an audience in
the festival town who might have an interest. Don’t assume that the
festival staff is necessarily looking out for your best interests when
they have to market a hundred or more films in addition to yours.
Distributing Printed Material
All of those posters and flyers and postcards aren’t going to do much
good sitting in your closet. Get them out to the people! Here’s how:
- Send some to the festival. Don’t overdo it here – chances are the
festival may put a poster up in the festival office and at the venue,
but that’s about it. They will put extra posters and material out on
the “goody tables” at registration once the festival begins, but getting
your flyers out on the street is strictly your business.
- Arrive early and do it yourself. This is the option most filmmakers

take, if they even think to arrive early. More often than not the cast
and crew arrives on the day the festival begins and plasters the same
four light poles and coffee shops as every other film in town.
Effectiveness: pretty low, unless your film plays a few times during
the festival and the posters have a chance to work. Ideally you
should give your posters two to five days to work their magic.
- Send material to your local contacts and ask them to post in public
spaces where your target audience hangs out. If the film features a
bicycle racing team, get the posters into cycle shops and the nearby
juice bars. You want your posters in places where movie posters
don’t usually show up, and you want them in the right places where
the right people will see them.

- If you can’t get help from your local contacts, you can hire a local
street team to help out. This can be pricey, but weigh it against the
cost of spending an extra couple of days in the festival city before the
fest begins.
- A more reasonable solution might be to post on Craigslist or

inquire at a university local to the festival. See if you can find a local
film, business, or marketing student who would be willing to help as
a way of gaining experience and expanding their professional
network.
It's Not Too Late
If you discovered this book somewhere in the middle of your festival

run, you may be thinking to yourself “Holy crap! All the missed
opportunities! I’m doomed.”
Take a deep breath and listen (or read, or whatever): It’s never too
late to make the most out of your festival experience. You just need to
slow down and recognize the festival for what it is: an opportunity to
further your career by getting your work recognized and connecting
to others in your chosen industry. (There is also the possibility of
finding a distributor for your film, but more about that later.)
There are lots of great stories to tell about filmmakers I’ve worked
with who made the most of their festival experiences with a little
advance planning. This example is one of my favorites, however,
because it demonstrates that you don’t need months of strategy to
get big results. You just need to be creative and put forth some effort.

Rachel Goslins, director of the documentary film ‘Bama Girl,
responded to an e-mail I sent congratulating her on her film’s
acceptance to the South by Southwest film festival. That e-mail,
which went out to a number of accepted filmmakers about two
weeks before SXSW, also contained a link to an article I’d written
with last-minute prep tips for filmmakers coming to Austin. It struck
a chord with Rachel, who wrote me the next day. After a volley of
messages back and forth, she sent me this e-mail:
[For clarity I should mention that ‘Bama Girl is the story of a plucky,
charming young African-American woman who decides to run for
Homecoming Queen at the University of Alabama, in defiance of the
campus political machine that has allegedly kept minorities out of
such school offices for over a decade.]
To: Chris
From: Rachel
So here we are one day before I leave for the Festival madness, and, largely
thanks to you, it has been an interesting and crazy week. For all my bluster
about not caring about whether I found a distributor, after a few
conversations with you, I realized I did NOT want to go to all the trouble of
making my own film, and then sit in an empty theater with my parents
watching it. And hey, I wouldn’t turn down someone who wanted to buy it
either... So in a very short span of time, I went from thinking of going to
SXSW (or any festival, really) as a prize for all my hard work (“Yay - I
made a good film! Now I get to sit back and be interviewed by the press,
watch it in a packed theater, and attend swinging parties!”) to realizing that
no, it was just another opportunity to be capitalized on, which would
require a big learning curve, figuring out ‘the game’ of festivals, a lot of hard
work, and finding someone to dress up in full Homecoming Queen regalia.
From a cold start, this is what I’ve managed to do in one week:

- Found and hired a Marylyn Monroe impersonator to dress up in a prom
dress, sash and tiara and hand out screening flyers for the film during the
peak hours of registration at the Austin Convention Center on Friday, and
for an hour in front of the Paramount Theatre.
- Designed and printed full and half page color screening flyers on cardstock
to be handed out and posted by my hordes of minions (uh, me and my
family)
- Bought domain name and put up basic website at www.bamagirlfilm.com

(goes live later today)
- Ordered a crap load of tiaras - a few higher end models for myself, my
parents (this means you Dad) and my friends to wear throughout the
festival, and a few dozen cheaper ones to give out in the VIP section of my
premiere screening. Hopefully the excessive tiara wearing will lead to many
conversations about the film, not to mention a new fashion trend in Austin.
- Talked to the theater managers to establish a two-row VIP section of the

theater for the first screening where people we specifically invite
(distributors, press, supermodels etc) will get a free drink and a tiara. The
idea is to have a list to put people on, even if they already have a pass, to
make them feel slightly more obligated to actually show up.
- Arranged for a member of the Austin chapter of the NAACP to be at the

premiere screening, as well as the president of the AKA chapter at UT (the
black sorority of my main character). Also got the president to circulate my
screening flyer by e-mail to her sorority sisters and post it in the house.
- Got the film mentioned in the Efilmcritics “Top Ten Films to Put On Your
Schedule for SXSW 2008” article.

- Hopefully get the film mentioned in your blog.
- Get the film mentioned on-air during the UT’s college radio station’s
morning show, and schedule an interview with them and Jessica (it will air
after the festival)
*****This is what I have NOT managed to do in the last week:
Despite my best efforts (and e-mail and phone calls that may border on
stalking) get any other publication interested in a pre-festival interview or
review. Mostly because they don’t call me back.
Mobilize any real support on the UT campus, within the Greek systems or
from the campus newspaper.
Lose 10 pounds so I look great at the opening night party.
Pre-sell the theatrical rights to THINKfilms.
So there we go. And here we go. Bring on the pageant hair.
Both screenings of ‘Bama Girl at SXSW sold out and the film enjoyed
a long festival run.
Common Problems
The unwritten rule of many film festivals – and it is a fact that most
programmers won’t volunteer – is that films do not get equal
treatment, particularly when it comes to venues and screening times.
The logistics of venues are mind-boggling; there are union rules,

insurance considerations, rental costs, and projection format

challenges, just to graze the tip of the iceberg. So when it comes to
putting movies at the “best” venues (closest, cleanest, biggest, best
attended – pick your own criteria), choices must be made.
Big studio premieres and sneak peeks are usually top of the heap
(they bring in the most ticket revenue), followed by feature films in
competition, followed by shorts in competition, and on down the
line. Your short playing out of competition may or may not end up in
a cherry spot, but it’s good to have an idea of where you are in the
pecking order.
A few tips on dealing with such problems:
- With venues, the internet is your friend up to a point. Google Maps

can tell you if a venue is within walking distance to the heart of the
festival, and what the foot traffic there might be like.Your best bet,
however, is to call the theater manager for facts and to find someone
who has been to the festival in previous years for opinions. You’re
looking for a general idea of the venue’s size and average attendance
during the festival.
Small venues are less of a concern than venues that are too far away
or are otherwise inconvenient for attendees. More problematic is a
venue that is too large for the festival – if you draw 300 attendees (no
small feat for most fests) to a 900 seat theater, the room still looks
mostly empty.
If you believe that you’ve been completely, utterly shafted on your

film’s venue, take a step back and evaluate. Is this your picture’s
world premiere? Is it playing at the festival in competition? Is it a
feature?

If the answer to two or more of these questions is “yes,” then you
owe it to yourself to at least ask the festival programmer why your
film has been slotted there. It may turn out that the venue isn’t as bad
as you thought or that the festival was forced to make some tough
choices and you came out on the short end.
- Screening times can have similar drawbacks; attendance tends to

be lower in the morning and on weekday afternoons when people
are otherwise engaged. If you have two screenings one of them will
very likely be in a less desirable time slot, which is fine – so long as
you have a prime spot for your other screening. Calls to the
programmer are appropriate if you believe your film will really be in
a bind attracting an audience, but it’s much more appropriate to ask
for marketing help from the festival than to ask a programmer to
unravel her schedule just for you.
- In general the way to deal with inconvenient screening times and

venues is to redouble your marketing efforts. People who really
want to see your movie will turn up regardless of the location or time
of day, so you need to work hard to reach them.
- You can also try to turn the venue’s weaknesses into strengths. For
example, if your screening is in the morning you might show up at
nearby coffee shops in the morning on preceding days. Hand out
flyers (these are people who will be up at this time of the morning
anyway) and offer to provide free coffee at the theater for ticket
holders.
Regardless of how disadvantaged you may feel with your film’s

screening time or venue, remember that it is not the festival’s duty to
justify its decisions to filmmakers. Programmers have very specific
reasons for programming films in certain places and often those
reasons have nothing to do with you.

The trump card, of course, is that you can always refuse to play your
film at the festival. I do not recommend playing this card in any but
the most disastrous of situations. Whether you are in the right to do
so or not, it will brand you as a “difficult” filmmaker who left a
festival in the lurch. Better to have a poor screening at a festival than
to jeopardize your future festival or distribution prospects.

- Your film’s success and your experience at a film festival will

depend largely on how well you prepare. It’s time to activate all
those logistics and marketing plans!
- Confirm all festival logistics including print delivery and the

festival’s marketing needs.
- Confirm your travel arrangements and learn about your destination

town.
- Create a sell-out plan by finding ways to make your screening more

of an event than just watching a movie.
- Research and engage special interest groups so that you can bring
your own audience to screenings.
- Do research on local, industry, and special interest media. Create a

prioritized list and engage the media when the timing is appropriate.
- Learn as much as you can about the festival and its public spaces,
including venues.
- Order your printed material.
- Start your marketing engine for this specific festival.
- Find a way to distribute your printed material a few days before

your screening.

- Check your screening schedule for problematic venues and
screening times; adjust your marketing plan to compensate.
- Pack those bags and shine your shoes – it’s time to go to a film
festival.

Chapter 6 - At the Festival
Revisit Your Goals
It’s been a while since we talked about goals, and hopefully you kept
those goals in mind as you created your strategy in the preceding
chapters. This is a perfect time to examine your hopes and
expectations for your film and your career, especially as they pertain
to the upcoming festival. Take some time as you travel to your
destination to reflect on where you want your film and your career to
go.
Set discrete, measurable, attainable goals. Of course you should

think about what your overall goals are for your film and your
career, but for the purposes of any one event you need to write down
the bite-sized goals that you can accomplish while you’re there.
“Find a distributor” is not a bite-sized goal. “Talk to ten distributors
and establish contact with an acquisition rep at each one” is more
reasonable. Some of your goals will have to do with your marketing
groundwork and others will be larger in scope. You may need to
adjust your goals based on what you find in the festival
environment.
Practice Your Elevator Pitch
As the primary spokesman for your film, you will need to answer
the question “what is your movie about?” dozens if not hundreds of
times. Come up with two or three different ways of explaining your
film in fewer than a hundred words – fewer than fifty if you really
want them to listen.
Test out your different pitches on a variety of different people before

and during the festival; it should quickly become apparent which
Chapter 6: At the Festival 166

one works best. Refine that one and stick with it. You will of course
be sick of this pitch within a day, but it will be novel and interesting
to every new person you meet so try not to let your weariness creep
into your delivery.
The other important question that will come up is “What’s next?”

You should always have a series of “next project” ideas ready so
that if someone expresses an interest in working with you or wants to
invest in your next project, you’ll have something to discuss. There’s
an even chance that this will also be the last question at your post-
screening Q&A, so have an answer ready.
Now that you’ve done this, get some sleep on the plane or in the car.
It’s your last chance to be well-rested before the festival madness
begins.
Make Contact
Upon arrival at the festival you will come into contact with some of
the festival staff, most likely volunteers at first. Depending on the
size and the personality of the festival, the programming director and
the person giving you a lift from the airport might be one and the
same. At other festivals you might never meet the head programmer.
If you are able to have some personal interaction with the person
who programmed your film, show enthusiasm for the festival and
express your gratitude once again. Small thank-you gifts are
appropriate, as is the offer or a drink or a meal. Be polite - have a
short conversation, thank them, confirm they have everything they
need from you, then go.
You may want to inquire about a tech check of your film. Some
festivals are more accommodating about this than others, but it never

hurts to ask if you can see the film on the actual theater screen where
an audience will be seeing it and confirm that everything looks and
sounds OK. If you brought a backup print, let the production
manager know it’s available and make sure she has your cell phone
number.
Some festivals hold formal orientation sessions for their filmmakers

– you should definitely attend. Not only will you get valuable
information about the festival and the resources available to you, but
it will also give you a chance to meet the other filmmakers in
attendance. If you’re friendly enough, these are the people you will
hang with for the bulk of the festival and possibly at other festivals.
Introduce yourself and ask politely about their films. Make friends.
Survey the Scene
With the introductions out of the way, it’s time to get acquainted with
the festival environment. Make sure you have your badge with you
at all times and understand where it entitles you to go. Check out the
filmmaker lounge and the press area, if they exist. If you arranged for
someone to distribute printed material ahead of your visit, now is the
time to walk around and check it out. If you haven’t done any
posting of flyers or posters yet, now is the time. There should be
plenty of opportunities for posting flyers around the festival venues,
but you should always do so with permission and without posting
over others’ flyers or posters. Businesses in the surrounding area
should be approached politely.
If there’s time before your screening, arrange to see a movie in the

venue where your film will play. Get used to the space and watch
how the other filmmakers handle their Q&As. Note any quirks in the
projection. Depending on what you see and your own personal need

to control the situation, you can attempt to introduce yourself to the
projectionist. In some cases it’s possible to go over your particular
print’s technical quirks (aspect ratio, sound, etc) and fix problems
before they occur during your actual screening.
Jay Edwards, director of Stomp! Shout! Scream! relates this story:
I was screening a documentary short at a fairly big, well-known, festival in

2003. I used a recycled Digibeta as a screening master, but the previous
festival didn’t rewind the tape before shipping it to the next festival. The
projectionist popped the tape in and hit play... on a big-budget action movie
electronic press kit. My short, Y’all Come!, was about a small town festival
of distinctly southern events—grease pole climbing, arm wresting and
tobacco spitting, so the four-wheeler jumps, explosions and Vin Diesel
sounds bites didn’t strike the projectionist as odd, I guess. It wasn’t until the
shorts program ended that I realized the mistake. I had to run out and have
my film screened in the middle of the Q&A. Lesson: Always check with the
projectionist before every screening. Try to get them to test your tape before
hand, if possible.
Work the Crowd
For the bulk of the time leading up to your screening you should be
in sales mode, campaigning on behalf of your picture to get butts
into seats. Your posters will do some of the job and if you’ve planned
a stunt that will help too, but the bulk of your work at the festival
will be done on an individual level, convincing festival badge
holders one by one that your film is the best thing playing at that
time.
You may not be the type to approach strangers and introduce

yourself, but if you want a sold-out screening you need to summon

the courage – or bring someone with you who comes by it naturally.
Actors are great for this. For his eco-horror feature Blood Car, Alex
Orr persuaded his attractive leading lady to pin 1-inch buttons on to
the badge lanyards of everyone she met at the Atlanta Film Festival.
Most of the young men were more than happy to be “pinned” by the
actress and you couldn’t walk three feet without seeing one of the
little yellow badges peeping out at you. By the second day, everyone
at the festival had at least heard of Blood Car.
When you introduce yourself as a filmmaker with a film in the

festival, the very next question is usually “what’s it about?”
hopefully followed by “when is it playing?” Your screening flyers
contain that information of course, but take the opportunity to
answer the questions personally. Follow up the conversation by
handing over a flyer with a smile and a question of your own: “Will
you come see my film?” Personal commitments like these may be
your best chance of filling your screening, so you should always ask.
If they say yes, say “I’m looking forward to seeing you there!” If they
say no or are non-committal, point to the flyer and ask them to hang
onto it just in case they find their prior engagement has fallen
through.
If you want to dip a toe into the water, try practicing on festival
volunteers. Not only are they the friendliest festivalgoers around
(they work for the event for free) , but they quite often get asked their
opinion on what to see. If they haven’t seen anything at the festival
yet, they’ll repeat what they’ve overheard – or what they learned
from an affable filmmaker.

Cozy Up to the Press
When Kissing on the Mouth played SXSW in 2005, director Joe

Swanberg wrote a travelogue about the festival with tips for
filmmakers. You should read it in its entirety, but I like this passage:
It’s not a bad idea to spend a few afternoons hanging around the Filmmaker
Lounge, which is conveniently located very near the Press Lounge. Stay
visible, and spend some time walking between the two places, seeing who
you can bump into. Sometimes press will be conducting interviews with
other filmmakers in the Press Lounge, and you can piggyback and do an
interview after they are finished. We got some good coverage just from being
in the right place at the right time, but the right place was almost always
somewhere near the Press Lounge.
The full travelogue is here:

kissingonthemouth.com/sxsw.html
The press have a job to do: present the most interesting news to their
audience before their competitors do. In order to make sure you get
good coverage, you need to make their job as easy as possible. That’s
where your web site and your printed materials (particularly
screener cards) come in.
You should have arranged press interviews before arrival at the

festival, but if you were less than successful there’s still time to nab
interviews and coverage on the spot. Critics and other press should
definitely be invited to your VIP section if you set one up. Make sure
the festival gets an extra press kit or two and make sure they know
that you have a clip reel available.

One last word on the press: do not be intimidated. They are there to
cover the festival, and you’re part of the festival. So if you present
yourself politely and provide compelling reasons that your film
should be part of their festival coverage, the average member of the
press will give you serious consideration. That’s not to say that the
media doesn’t house its share of schmucks, or that anyone owes you
coverage, but you have a right to conduct business the same as
anyone else. Have your screener cards and your flyers ready, and go
get ‘em.
Panels and Screenings
- Panels can be educational and useful for networking. Keep the

festival program guide to hand so you always have options if you’re
not actively promoting your film; panels are a great way to learn
more about filmmaking and the industry. Even panels that aren’t
great will have some interesting people at the front of the room, so
stick around afterwards and introduce yourself. With journalists and
industry types alike, the phrase “I have a film in the festival this
year” is the perfect icebreaker: it identifies you as someone with
talent and of potential interest. Use it to your advantage.
- The same goes for screenings of films other than your own. After
the Q&A, approach the filmmakers and introduce yourself. Be sure
to say something nice about the film and ask about their experiences
at the festival so far. Chances are good that other filmmakers have
met journalists who haven’t found you yet, or have learned lessons
about the festival experience that could benefit you. You want that
knowledge. Be polite about this, and always present it as an
exchange of info rather than an opportunity to “pick their brain.”
When you find someone who seems particularly well-informed, offer

to buy the next round. The collected wisdom of the other filmmakers
at a festival is well worth the price of a few drinks.
- If you’re lucky enough to be sitting in the front of the room as a

panel participant, don’t be shy about using it as a platform to
promote your film. When asked to introduce yourself, mention your
film and when it’s playing at the festival.
Indie film consultant Mark Wynns cautions filmmakers:
If you do get on a panel make sure that you a) know enough about the
subject matter to be helpful to the discussion and b) particularly if this is
your first film: don’t be a jerk. Believe it or not, the old adage is right. If
you don’t have anything nice to say keep your trap shut or at the very least
be diplomatic about it. Don’t belittle other filmmakers or films you’ve seen.
Don’t disparage the festival staff or accommodations. Don’t be cocky to the
point of arrogance if you’ve gotten some positive buzz. This may seem
obvious, but it happens. It’s a small world and the film industry is even
smaller. Remember – you never know who you’re talking to. Think of
yourself as Patrick Swayze in Road House – no matter what happens, ‘Be
Nice.’ This doesn’t mean you can’t be assertive and you should never be a
pushover, but use your head.
Before Your Screening
Try to relax. Wear something nice. Get there early. Breathe.

Introducing Your Film
If the festival asks you to introduce the film, keep it brief. Thank the
festival staff, express your gratitude just to be there. If you have a
very short story to tell that helps set the scene, tell it.
- Cell phones have been common for ages now, but people still
forget to turn them off before a movie. A polite reminder is
absolutely appropriate.
- Thank the audience for coming and ask them to please stay
afterwards for the Q&A. Mention the cast and crew if they’re present.
Encourage everyone to enjoy the show.
How to Nail Your Post-Screening Q&A
- Accept the fact that people are going to walk out before the Q&A.
There’s little you can do about this other than to make your ending
credits as short as possible, but even so people will scoot out the door
as soon as the film is over. Don’t take it personally; there are many
reasons for bolting out of a screening at the end, not least of which is
to run a few blocks to make it to another screening. Just think: people
are leaving other filmmakers’ Q&As to make it in time for your
screening too. Of course there are also people running off to the
bathroom, which is less flattering. In any case, the people left are the
ones who really liked your film and want to hear what you have to
say. Those are the ones you want to stick around.
- Get everyone from your film up to the front. Particularly the cast
(people enjoy seeing on-screen characters in the flesh), but don’t
leave crew members out either. The more people you can have with

you up there the better, particularly since the audience will ask them
questions too and take some of the heat off of you.
- Bring an expert. When showing her doc Election Day during the
Atlanta Film Festival in 2007, director Katy Chevigny brought along
the director of a local voting rights organization to answer tricky
questions about the elections process. Not only can a local expert
lend credibility to your Q&A, but they can also help you market your
screenings by reaching out to the members of local organizations
with an interest in your film’s subject matter. This is as important for
narrative films as it is for documentaries – if your film involves any
kind of special interest then you can get the local members of that
special interest involved.
- Have some opening remarks ready, or get the theater manager to

lob you the first question. Often the questions won’t really get going
until someone breaks the ice.
- Let someone else pick the audience members. If you’re having

trouble making out members of the audience due to lighting or the
size of the venue, get a festival volunteer to pick the raised hands out
of the crowd for you. You have enough to think about, and the
volunteer will have a better sense of when it’s time to wrap up.
- Repeat the question before you answer. Even if you can hear the
question, don’t assume the audience can. This is particularly
important in large venues or if the Q&A is being recorded by the
festival; you want there to be some context for your answer. It also
gives you a few extra seconds to formulate your answer.
Practice your answers to the most common questions. Over the

course of your festival run you’re going to hear these questions a

zillion times, so have the answers down pat before you have to
answer them.
• Where did you get the idea for the film?

• How much was your budget?
• What did you shoot on?
• How did you find the cast?
• When and where did you shoot?
• Who did the music/makeup/whatever?
In addition, decide ahead of time the questions that you will and
won’t answer.
- If your film has a second screening, use the Q&A to encourage the
audience to tell friends about your film. Good word of mouth after
the first screening can pack the house for the second.
Audiences are always curious about your budget – naturally they

want to know how much money you raised and how much they
might have to raise and spend to make something that looks
comparable. Unfortunately revealing your actual budget can make
your life (or your sales rep’s life) more difficult, so it’s best to prepare
an answer that can partially satisfy or even deflect the question.
Scott D. Hanson, director of “Parts,” likes to say that his budget was
“two relationships and a trip to the hospital”.
- Above all, try to relax and appear as if you’re enjoying yourself. The
audience will forgive nervousness, but you really don’t have that
much to be nervous about. You’ve just had a great screening and the
people who hated your film left before the Q&A. Right?
- After the Q&A you will be approached by a number of people,

including programmers from other festivals, industry types, and

your new fans. Be gracious, try to keep conversations short so you
can get to everyone, and collect business cards. If you want to keep
talking to one person in particular but there are others waiting their
turn, suggest a coffee date later in the day.
When the Screening Stops
With your screening out of the way it’s time to switch modes. You’re
not selling the event anymore, you’re selling yourself. The good
news is that this should not be a hard sell. You want people to think
of you as talented, yes, but also friendly and easygoing.
- Like any other business, the entertainment industry is as much

about personalities and face time as it is about talent or common
business goals. The festival grapevine spreads news quickly, and
since you never know who you’re talking to (or being overheard by),
your negative opinions on anything (including the color of the
tablecloth or the way that drink tastes) are best kept to yourself.
- “Nothing goes as far a little humility,” says Mark Wynns. “When

your film does get in that Tier 1 festival, be confident in your work,
but also realize that besides you making a good movie, a lot of other
things happened that got you there. Don’t stand outside the theatre
and say negative things about other films and filmmakers at the
festival – even if you really hate their film – to people you don’t know.
Trust me on this, you do not want to find out what happens if you
start badmouthing to the wrong person. You’ve made a film that can
stand on its own, so let your film do your talking.”
- Go to the parties. There are some of you out there who need to be
told to do this. When it comes to film festivals, parties are where a lot
of business relationships begin. You don’t need to stay to the bitter

end of every party, nor do you need to go everywhere you’re invited,
but get out and engage in the art of the schmooze. If your
schmoozing skills are rusty, ask for advice from the schmooziest
person you know. Be sure to pass out those flyers when the
opportunity presents itself. Don’t forget to ask for business cards
from the interesting people you meet, and try to take it easy on the
open bar.
- Take good notes. Your festival notebook is as important here as it

was in the previous chapters. You don’t need to scribble out every
word you hear verbatim, but you should get in the habit of discreetly
jotting down a note or two after each conversation you have. Make
sure you take note of the person’s name (even if you got their
business card) and what the main points of the conversation were.
Don’t rely on your memory; it will fail you when you most need it.
- Take pictures. Of course you should take pictures of the sellout

crowds at your screening (or at least frame the shot so it looks like a
sellout crowd), but make sure you get some shots of the festival
poster, the theater marquee (especially if your film’s name is on it!),
and of the people you meet. Yes, you should get a picture of yourself
with that celebrity over there, but don’t forget to capture the
memories of your newfound friends and newly converted fans.
When you checked in at the festival you should have received a program
guide. Though you likely flipped straight to your film’s listing when you first got
it, take some time afterwards to check out the guide thoroughly. Read what
they wrote about your film. (Hopefully they didn’t just use the synopsis you
provided.)
I always enjoy it when festival staff take enough pride in their selections to
write original synopses; it provides some insight into the personalities of the
programmers and reveals the character of the festival. If you like the synopsis
well enough you can always ask to use it as your official synopsis in the future.

- Stay tuned to the festival news. Subscribe to the official festival
newsletters and text message updates and read some of the third-
party coverage of the festival as a whole. You want to get a sense of
where the action is and what events are likely to draw crowds. Most
especially you want to be aware of last-minute schedule changes and
additions – things can change in the middle of a festival and you
can’t make intelligent choices about how to spend your time if you
aren’t in the know.
Wheeling and Dealing
It is the not-so-secret dream of every filmmaker who steps onto the

festival circuit: to play at a prestigious festival, to generate enormous
buzz before your screening and sell out, and to receive a huge check
from a smiling distribution exec as the credits roll. It is with 99%
certainty that I can say that this will not happen to you. (If you’re in
the other 1%, congratulations! You’ve made an awesome film and I
want to see it.)
The more likely scenario is that, if your film does well at prominent
festivals, distributors and sales agents will approach you during the
festival and after to “see what your plans are” regarding distribution.
If you’re starting to get serious inquiries from distributors and
you’ve been able to get representation before now, you should be
able to secure a producer’s rep at this point.
Brian Udovich, co-producer of The Wackness, cautions against trying

to go it alone. “Representation makes the whole process easier. You
need an expert who knows what similar projects have sold for in the
past, who knows who the players are, and knows the lay of the
land.” That doesn’t mean that you can sit back and watch it unfold

without your participation, he says. “Sometimes you have to hold
your rep’s feet to the fire, to ask them ‘what are you doing today to
sell this film?’ It’s important to be part of the process.”
If you find yourself at a festival with a serious offer from a

distributor and no representation, don’t sign anything without
talking to a lawyer and making an attempt at finding that sales agent.
“If you have an offer on the table it’s hard to think of an agent who
wouldn’t step in to protect your interests for that ten percent,” says
Udovich.
Don’t worry about the offer evaporating, and don’t cave in to high-
pressure sales tactics. If there’s serious interest during the festival,
there will be serious interest later.
Handling Disappointment
The number one rule of handling any negative situation at a film

festival is: don’t wig out. I’ve seen a producer pull at his own hair
and moan over relatively minor projection issues, ignoring the
packed house that obviously enjoyed the film. Another director
screamed curses at a hapless volunteer working the ticket booth for a
perceived slight. Perhaps worst of all are the filmmakers who take
their grievances to the court of public opinion, complaining about the
festivals that have wronged them on internet message boards for
months afterwards.
Such behavior rarely helps your cause in the short term, other than to
draw attention to yourself, and in the long term being unpleasant
only alienates potential allies.
Things that can go wrong include:

• A poorly attended screening
• Bad projection
• A lost print
• A dirty hotel room
Nearly every other page of this book is devoted to anticipating and

preventing such unpleasantries, but if something happens try the
following steps:
- Take the initiative. If there’s something you can do to fix the

problem without involving the festival staff, try that. If it’s a problem
with your hotel room, negotiate directly with the hotel staff. If your
print fails to play during a screening, step up front to apologize and
keep the audience in their seats while you replace it with your
backup.
- Be firm about your complaint but don’t whine or raise your voice.
Describe the problem precisely in a normal conversational tone and
ask for help.
- Suggest resolutions. If you know how to change the settings on

that projector to display your film in the correct aspect ratio, speak
up.
- Accept apologies but don’t insist on them. Acknowledge when

someone is doing their best to help. No one at a festival sets out to
create a bad experience. They’re probably more upset, embarrassed,
and stressed out than you are.
- Be open to compromise if a perfect solution can’t be found.

- Be gracious afterwards. If you write a festival diary for your web
site, acknowledge the problem and praise the festival for acting to
correct the situation. If they completely failed to address the issue it’s
probably best not to mention it at all.
The world is smaller than ever before, and the film festival world
even smaller than that. Festival directors talk to one another, and to
the distributors, sales reps, and other industry types who used to be
festival directors. When they talk about you to one another, it’s your
job to make sure they have only nice things to say.
When It Becomes Old Hat
If you’re having a successful festival run, you may start to weary of

the routine. The festivals you attend later in your film’s run may not
be as glamorous or organized as the events you play first and it can
be easy to become cynical. Try to maintain your enthusiasm – if not
for the festival circuit itself, then at least for the audience members
who haven’t seen your film yet. These are the people who will
potentially support your career in the movies to come; if you appear
indifferent to their admiration you probably won’t keep it for long.
Heading Home
If you depart before the festival ends, be sure to say goodbye to the
programming staff and show them your appreciation one more time.
If you hang around to see the festival to its conclusion, go to the

closing night party and appreciate the more relaxed atmosphere.
Some of the most interesting conversations to be had at any festival

will be with the event staff as the fest comes to a close and as tensions
ease.
Now pack up your suitcase and board that plane; it’s time to go
home and start thinking about the next festival.

- Years of hard work are about to pay off. You made it! Now make the
most of it.
- Revisit your goals for yourself and your film. Reduce them to
smaller goals that you can accomplish during the festival.
- Practice your elevator pitch and be ready to talk about your “what’s
next” projects.
- Upon arrival, make contact with the festival staff and get used to
the festival surroundings, including the venue where your film will
play.
- Work the crowd – get your marketing materials out there and talk
to as many people as you can about your film.
- Spend some time hanging around the press. Make sure they have
your marketing swag, screener card, and other materials if
appropriate.
- Attend some panels and get to know the panelists afterwards. If

you’re lucky enough to be on a panel, be nice.
- Prepare for your screening intro and/or Q&A – you don’t want to
make stuff up on the spot.
- After your screening, spend time getting to know the other

filmmakers and attending industry & press.

- If you start to get serious interest from distributors, make sure you
have representation and advice from your professional team before
you sign anything.
- If there are aspects of the festival that disappoint you, try to find
reasonable resolutions. Don’t whine or shout. Do not air your
grievances in a public forum after the festival.
- Try to maintain your enthusiasm even when the festival routine

becomes exhausting.

Chapter 7 - Aftermath
Aftermath
The party’s over. Filmmakers and moviegoers alike shuffle their feet
down airport concourses to board their departing flights and nurse
the last vestiges of their carefully cultivated hangovers. As a
filmmaker returning home in the afterglow of a festival, you should
check the following items off your to-do list before “real” life
reclaims your attention.
- Organize and digitize those business cards. If you did nothing else
this book advised you to do, I hope you gave away your own
business cards and collected those of the people you met. Dig them
out of your bag or wallet or wherever you stashed them and get that
data out of the physical realm and into the digital. Whatever you use
for storing contact data is fine, just make sure it’s accessible and
synced up with your e-mail client when you need it. If you have
some way of tagging or grouping the contacts by festival, you’ll have
a ready-to-go contact list that you can ping if you decide to revisit
that festival next year. Better yet, ask everyone you met to sign up for
your film’s mailing list.
Once you’ve got your business cards digitized, save the physical
cards in a way that is meaningful to you. Or don’t. I gave up my
Rolodex years ago but I still keep stacks of cards from each festival
for a while. Eventually they either get tossed or used, but I like
having the physical reminder of the meeting and they don’t take up
much space.
- Go back over your notes and follow up on to-do items. Hopefully

you took good notes and you have a list of tasks to do, whether it’s
sending screeners to distributors and journalists or simply following
up on the previous work of a filmmaker whose feature you enjoyed.
Chapter 7: Aftermath 188

Complete these in the first week after you get back so they don’t slip
through the cracks.
- Send follow-up and thank-you e-mails. Dedicate a block of time

just to e-mail every single person you met. Whether they’re “it was
good to meet you” e-mails, thank-you notes, or follow-ups on
specific inquiries, touch base one more time with everyone. In
particular you should follow up with journalists; offer to answer any
further questions they might have as a polite way of reminding them
that you’re expecting some coverage.
- Update your web site & social media. One of the keys to
encouraging repeat visits to your web site is to post new content, and
a festival trip is a great reason to update. Post pictures from your
screenings and a quick blog entry or two about the festival, the
people you met, and the films you saw. Giving good “press” to other
films is a good way of encouraging links back. Once the updates are
complete, send a message to your mailing list subscribers inviting
them to come back and check out the new stuff.
- Set up Google alerts for press and blog mentions of your film.
Google offers e-mail alerts that let you know when a phrase or word
combination of your choosing appear in the press. I suggest starting
with your film’s title in quotes. If that returns too many unrelated
results, use the director’s name to narrow things down a bit.
- Analyze the promotional efforts of the festival and of your fellow

filmmakers. Look for ways that you can adapt their techniques to
make your own marketing better.
- Plan for your next festival. If you’re fortunate enough to have a

dance card with more festivals on it already, review the roster of
films and panels for the upcoming festival. If you spot anyone you

know from a previous festival, get in touch. At the very least you can
set up a time for a meeting to compare notes. With some planning
you can share resources to cross-promote your films or just get tips
on the best ways to promote your own film locally at the upcoming
festival. At times other filmmakers will know more about an
upcoming festival than you do. Maybe they even live in that town –
you might even be able to score some free lodging if you play your
cards right.
What About Distribution?
While film festivals are in many ways the gateways to distribution,

one’s inclusion in even a major film festival is a far cry from a
guaranteed distribution deal. Volumes longer than this one have
been written on the distribution of independent films and ongoing
changes in the indie film landscape during the last decade (especially
the collapse of so many major indie distributors and the shift of
home entertainment towards digital streaming) make it hard to keep
any kind of distribution advice up-to-date.
There are still lots of questions out there about the distribution of
independent film. Is theatrical still going to be a thing for indie
pictures? Will subscription and ad-based platforms like YouTube,
Netflix, and Amazon become the primary source of income for indie
filmmakers? Is cable TV likely to be a major force (or even continue
to exist as we know it) in the future? How accepting will audiences
be of filmmakers who try to self-distribute on pay-to-download
services?
I don’t claim to have the answers, though I’m certain that festivals –
at least the reputable ones – will always have a place as arbiters of

quality and as venues for the celebration of film. Festival screening
committees will continue to rake through the heaps of movies made
every year and extract the cinematic gems, and programmers will
polish those gems for presentation to the world. Cinephiles the world
over will flock to the festivals for the movies and the glamour, and
filmmakers will continue to use them as combination coming-out
parties and career fairs. Whether distributors invent methods to
deliver those festival gems to audiences profitably or if filmmakers
opt out of the old system and find a way to reach their audiences
directly remains to be seen.
My favorite book on the subject of independent film is Lloyd

Kaufman’s Make Your Own Damn Movie. If you’ve never read it I
suggest that you make it the very next book on your shelf. Kaufman
is the mad genius behind the Troma Studios movies like The Toxic
Avenger and Sgt. Kabukiman, N.Y.P.D. In Make Your Own Damn Movie,
Kaufman espouses a philosophy that every first time filmmaker
should take to heart (and I’m paraphrasing here): If you got into the
movie business to get rich, you completely missed the point.
This Is Not The End
By now it should be apparent that a run on the film festival circuit is

not merely a series of discrete events but an ongoing process of
promoting your film and building your career. One festival flows
into another, building up your media portfolio and buzz (both
personal and film-specific) to the point that you sell your film or
embark on another project. Not that beginning a new project
absolves you of promoting your past projects. Your films are your
children; you owe it to them and to yourself to devote time to
ensuring long, happy lives for each of them.
Come learn more about festivals at filmfestivalsecrets.com .

Afterword
Film Festival Secrets is an evolving document. As the world of

independent film changes, so will the festival world and so too will
this book. I look to filmmakers like you to tell the stories and ask the
questions that will shape the next edition. Please send them to:
[email protected]
Now put down the book and go make a great movie. I’m looking
forward to seeing it at a film festival soon.
Appendix - Directory of Notable
Festivals
About the Directory
The first edition of Film Festival Secrets did not include a festival
directory because – well, it’s a big task. Repeated requests for a
directory of reliable and reputable film festivals wore me down,
however, and you’ll find my work in the following pages. First, a few
things to know:
- If you’re looking for a list of the “top” festivals, you’re going to

have to look elsewhere. Personally I find those kinds of lists pretty
useless, as my own strategy is to find festivals by geography,
subject matter, and programming tastes. Hence the use of the word
notable instead of superlatives like “best” or “coolest.”
- I’m working on a directory of festivals broken down by niche, but

that will have to wait for the next edition. For now the directory is
organized by location so you can identify events to which you can
travel easily.
- Although there are some 1200 festivals or so in this directory, it is a

fraction of the festivals to be found in the myriad online
submissions tools. This curated list is the result of many hours
poring over those submissions platforms, the web sites of the
festivals, and lists curated by other authorities. With that info
filtered through my own knowledge of fests through the years, I’m
confident that this is a well-vetted list of “legitimate” festivals. I’d
feel comfortable submitting a film to any of these events in the
knowledge that the film would very likely be watched and fairly
judged, and at the end of the process a festival with live human
attendees would be held, even if my film might not necessarily be
a part of that festival.
- I looked for things like the longevity of a festival, its recent activity,
online presence, reputation, the presence of enthusiastic corporate
Festival Directory 196

and individual backers, certification by independent film
authorities, and whether the event actually takes submissions from
the public (rather than simply curating material without an open
submissions process). Each of these festivals may satisfy those
criteria to varying degrees but they all have to have at least a few
of these qualities to be listed here.
- The exclusion of a festival is not a condemnation of that event.

There are certainly worthy festivals I missed. If a festival you
admire (or organize) isn’t listed here, feel free to draw my
attention to it and I’ll consider adding it to the next edition. (Email
[email protected] with the word “directory” in the
subject line.)
- Sometimes I included a festival that most people would never

submit to simply because the specificity of the subject matter or
some other quirk of the event tickled me. You’ll probably be able
to tell which ones those are.
- This list is intended as a starting point – do your own research! – but

hopefully it’s a useful tool that will jumpstart the creation of a
festival strategy for your film.
A final note: although I enlisted the help of some assistants for the
copying and pasting of information, all of the heavy lifting was done
by me, so I humbly beg your forgiveness in advance for any errors
you may encounter. Please report them to
[email protected] with the word “directory” in the
subject line.
Knock ‘em dead!

Festivals in the Phoenix Comicon Film Festival -
phoenixcomicon.com
United States of Phoenix Film Festival -

phoenixfilmfestival.com
America Scottsdale International Film Festival -
scottsdalefilmfestival.com
Alabama Sedona International Film Festival -

sedonafilmfestival.com
Fairhope Film Festival -
fairhopefilmfestival.org
Arkansas
George Lindsey UNA Film Festival -
lindseyfilmfest.com Arkansas Shorts - lowkeyarts.org
Hurricane Film Festival - Bentonville Film Festival -
hurricanefilmfestival.com bentonvillefilmfestival.com
Montgomery Film Festival - El Dorado Film Festival - eldofilmfest.com
montgomeryfilmfestival.com
Fayetteville Film Fest -
Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival - fayettevillefilmfest.org
sidewalkfest.com
Filmland - arkansascinemasociety.org
Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival -
Alaska hsdfi.org
Anchorage International Film Festival -
anchoragefilmfestival.org
California
Arizona AFI Fest - afi.com/AFIFEST
Arizona International Film Festival - American Documentary and Animation

filmfestivalarizona.com Film Festival -
americandocumentaryfilmfestival.co
Arizona Underground Film Festival - m
azuff.org
Another Hole in the Head genre film
Desperado LGBT Film and Arts Festival - festival - ahith.com
desperadofilmfestival.com
Bent: Sacramento International LGBTQ
International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival Film Festival- bentfilmfest.org
- horrorscifi.com
Burbank International Film Festival -
Loft Film Fest - loftfilmfest.org burbankfilmfest.org
NatiVisions Film Festival - nativisions.com Catalina Film Festival - catalinafilm.org
Cinema Diverse: The Palm Springs Napa Valley Film Festival -
LGBTQ Film Festival - napavalleyfilmfest.org
cinemadiverse.org
NewFilmmakers Los Angeles - nfmla.org
Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival -
Newport Beach Film Festival -
cinequest.org
newportbeachfilmfest.com
Dances With Films - danceswithfilms.com
Noir City Film Festival - noircity.com
Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival -
Noise Pop - noisepop.com
dtlaff.com
Other Venice Film Festival -
Feel Recovery -
othervenicefilmfestival.com
reelrecoveryfilmfestival.org
Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival -
HollyShorts - hollyshorts.com
outfest.org
Hollywood Black Film Festival -
Palm Springs International Film Festival -
hollywoodblackfilmfestival.com
psfilmfest.org
Horrible Imaginings Film Festival -
Palm Springs International ShortFest -
hifilmfest.com
psfilmfest.org
International Ocean Film Festival -
Pan African Film Festival - paff.org
intloceanfilmfest.org
Rehoboth Beach Jewish Film Festival -
LA Cinefest - lacinefest.org
rehobothfilm.com
LA Femme International Film Festival -
Sacramento Film & Music Festival -
lafemme.org
sacfilm.com
LA Shorts International Film Festival -
Sacramento French Film Festival -
lashortsfest.com
sacramentofrenchfilmfestival.org
Long Beach QFilm Festival -
Sacramento International Film Festival -
qfilmslongbeach.com
sacramentofilmfestival.com
Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival -
San Diego Asian Film Festival - sdaff.org
vcmedia.org/festival
San Diego International Film Festival -
Los Angeles Short Film Festival -
sdfilmfest.com
lasff.com
San Diego Latino Film Festival-
Los Angeles Television, Script and Film
sdlatinofilm.com
Festival - latvsff.org
San Francisco Independent Film Festival -
Mammoth Lakes Film Festival -
sfindie.com
mammothlakesfilmfestival.com
San Francisco International Asian
Mendocino Film Festival -
American Film Festival -
mendocinofilmfestival.org
caamfest.com
Mill Valley Film Festival - mvff.com

San Francisco International Film Festival - Denver Film Festival - denverfilm.org
sffilm.org
Durango Independent Film Festival -
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival - durangofilm.org
jfi.org
Mountainfilm - mountainfilm.org
San Luis Obispo International Film
Rocky Mountain Women's Film Festival -
Festival - slofilmfest.org
rmwfilminstitute.org
San Pedro International Film Festival,
Telluride Film Festival -
Port of Los Angeles - spiffest.org
telluridefilmfestival.org
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
- sbiff.org
Connecticut
Screamfest Horror Film Festival &
Screenplay Competition - Greater New Milford Film Festival -
screamfestla.com bankstreettheater.com
Sex Worker Fest - sexworkerfest.com Hartford Jewish Film Festival - hjff.org
SF Shorts: The San Francisco Mystic Film Festival -

International Festival of Short Films - mysticfilmfestival.com
sfshorts.com Viva Cinema - Latin American Cinema
Festival - ctfilmfest.com
Shriekfest - shriekfest.com
Sierra Nevada Film Festival -
sierrafilmfest.org Delaware
Silicon Beach Film Festival - Delaware LGBTQ+ CINE-brations -
siliconbeachff.com rehobothfilm.com
Sunset Film Festival - Don't Hassle Me I'm Local -

sunsetfilmfestival.com miltontheatre.com
Voiceless International Film Festival - Rehoboth Beach Independent Film

voicelessfilmfest.com Festival - rehobothfilm.com
Wild & Scenic Film Festival - WRPN Women's International Film

wildandscenicfilmfestival.org Festival - wwiff.com
Colorado District of Columbia

5 Point Film Festival - 5pointfilm.org AFI DOCS Film Festival - afi.com/AFIDOCS
Aspen Shortsfest - aspenfilm.org Arabian Sights Film Festival -

filmfestdc.org/arabiansights
Bike Smut - bikesmut.com
DC Asian Pacific American Film -
Boulder International Film Festival - apafilm.org
biff1.com
Notable Festivals in the USA 200

DC Independent Film Festival - dciff- Fort Myers Beach International Film
indie.org Festiva - fmbifilmfest.com
DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival - Fort Myers Film Festival -
dcpfaf.org fortmyersfilmfestival.com
DC Shorts - dcshorts.com Freak Show Horror Film Festival -
freakshowfilmfest.com
DC Web and Digital Media Festival -
dcwebfest.org Gasparilla International Film Festival -
gasparillafilmfestival.com
Environmental Film Festival - dceff.org
GLFF Short Film Competition -
Filmfest DC - filmfestdc.org
gainesvillelatinofilmfestival.com
March on Washington Film Festival -
Halloween Horror Picture Show -
marchonwashingtonfilmfestival.org
thehalloweenhorrorpictureshow.com
Reel Affirmation Film Festival LGBTQ-
International Women's Film Festival -
reelaffirmations.org
womensfilmfest.com
Washington Jewish Film Festival -
Jacksonville Film Festival -
jxjdc.org
jacksonvillefilmfestival.com
Key West Film Festival - kwfilmfest.com
Florida
Love Your Shorts Film Festival -
American Black Film Festival - abff.com loveyourshorts.com
BLUE Ocean Film Festival and Melbourne Independent Filmmakers
Conservation Summit - Festival - melbournefilmfest.com
blueoceanfilmfestival.org
Miami Film Festival -
Borscht Film Festival - borsc.ht miamifilmfestival.com
Central Florida Film Festival - Miami Short Film Festival - miamisff.com
centralfloridafilmfestival.com
Naples International Film Festival -
Cinema Verde - cinemaverde.org artisnaples.org
Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish OUTshine GLBT Film Festival
Film Festival - outshinefilm.com
palmbeachjewishfilm.org
Palm Beach International Film Festival -
Florida Animation Festival - pbifilmfest.org
floridaanimationfestival.com
Rendezvous Film Festival -
Florida Film Festival - rendezvousfilmfestival.net
floridafilmfestival.com
Sarasota Film Festival -
Fort Lauderdale International Film sarasotafilmfestival.com
Festival - fliff.com

Stamped Film Festival - Deep Waters - piccom.org
stampedfilmfest.com
Guam International Film Festival -
Sunscreen Film Festival - guamfilmfestival.org
sunscreenfilmfestival.com
Tallahassee Film Festival - Hawaii
tallahasseefilmfestival.com
Hawaii International Film Festival -
Tally Shorts Film Festival - tallyshorts.com hiff.org
Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Hawaii Shorts International Film Festival -
Film Festival - tiglff.com hawaiishorts.com
Through Women's Eyes Film Festival - Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival - hglcf.org
throughwomenseyes.com
Maui Film Festival - mauifilmfestival.com
Georgia
Idaho
Atlanta Film Festival -
atlantafilmfestival.com 39 Rooms - themodernhotel.com/do/39-
rooms-film-festival
Atlanta Jewish Film Festival - ajff.org
BoVi Film Festival - facebook.com/
BronzeLens Film Festival - bovifilmfestival
bronzelens.com
Idaho Horror Film Festival -
Buried Alive Horror Film Festival - idahohorrorfilmfestival.org
buriedalivefilmfest.com
Kino Short Film Festival - uidaho.edu
Kingdomwood Film Festival -
kingdomwood.com Sun Valley Film Festival -
sunvalleyfilmfestival.org
Macon Film Festival -
maconfilmfestival.com
Illinois
ME Film Festival -
milledgevillefilmfest.com Blow-Up Arthouse Film Festival -
blowupfilmfest.com
Out On Film LGBT - outonfilm.org
Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival -
Rome International Film Festival - bwiff.com
riffga.com
Central Illinois Feminist Film Festival -
Savannah Film Festival - ecofilmmediaenvironment.blogspot.com
filmfest.scad.edu
Chicago Horror Film Festival -
Y'allywood Film Festival - yallywood.org chicagohorrorfest.com
Chicago International Children’s Film
Guam Festival - festival.facets.org

Chicago International Film Festival - River Bend Film Festival -
chicagofilmfestival.com riverbendfilmfest.com
Chicago Latino Film Festival -
chicagolatinofilmfestival.org Iowa
Chicago South Asian Film Festival - Interrobang Film Festival -
csaff.org desmoinesartsfestival.org
Naperville Independent Film Festival - Iowa City International Documentary Film
naperfilmfest.org Festival - icdocs.wordpress.com
Peace On Earth Film Festival - Iowa Independent Film Festival -
peaceonearthfilmfestival.org iifilmfestival.org
Prairie State Film Festival - Iowa Motion Picture Awards - impa.tv
prairiestatefilmfest.com
Julien Dubuque International Film
Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ Festival - julienfilmfest.com
International Film Festival -
reelingfilmfestival.org Landlocked Film Festival - llff.org
Route 66- route66filmfestival.net Oneota Film Festival -

oneotafilmfestival.org
Shortcut 100 - shortcut-100-film-
Sioux City International Shorts Film
festival.jimdosite.com
Festival - siouxcityfilmfest.org
Wild Rose Independent Film Festival -
Indiana wildrosefilmfest.com
Bill Johnson Black Film Festival -
glentheater.wix.com/billjohnsonfilm
Kansas
Heartland International Film Festival -
heartlandfilm.org Kansas International Film Festival -
kansasfilm.com
HorrorHound Weekend/Film Fest -
horrorhound.com Tallgrass Film Festival - tallgrassfilm.org
Indiana Short Film Festival - Terror on the Plains Horror Film Festival -
inshortfilmfest.com terrorontheplains.com
Indianapolis LGBT Film Festival -

indylgbtfilmfest.com Kentucky
Indy Film Fest - indyfilmfest.org Louisville's International Festival of Film -
louisvillefilmfestival.org
Indy Shorts International Film Festival -
heartlandfilm.org River's Edge International Film Festival -
riversedgefilmfestival.com
MayDay Film Festival -
maydayfilmfestival.com

Scarefest Horror & Paranormal Film Maryland
Festival & Convention -
thescarefest.com Chesapeake Film Festival -
chesapeakefilmfestival.com
Maryland Film Festival - mdfilmfest.com
Louisiana
Maryland International Film Festival -
Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival -
marylandiff.net
cinemaonthebayou.com
Queen City Film Festival -
Lake Charles Film Festival -
queencityfilmfestival.org
lakecharlesfilmfestival.com
Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival -
Louisiana International Film Festival -
sweatyeyeballs.com
lifilmfest.org
New Orleans Film Festival -
neworleansfilmfestival.org
Massachusetts
NOLA Horror Film Fest -
nolahorrorfilmfest.com Boston Film Festival -
bostonfilmfestival.org
Pontchartrain Film Festival -
pontchartrainfilmfestival.com Haverhill Experimental Film Festival -
haverhillfilmfestival.org
Independent Film Festival Boston -
iffboston.org
Maine Martha’s Vineyard International Film

Festival - mvfilmsociety.com
ANIMAINE: The Maine Animation Festival
- animaine.org Massachusetts Independent Film Festival
- massiff.org
Bluestocking Film Festival -
bluestockingfilms.com Provincetown Film Festival -
provincetownfilm.org
Camden International Film Festival -
pointsnorthinstitute.org The Run&Shoot Filmworks Martha's
Vineyard African American Film
Emerge Film Festival - Festival - mvaaff.com
emergefilmfestival.org
Main Outdoor Film Festival -
maineoutdoorfilmfestival.com Michigan
Ann Arbor Film Festival - aafilmfest.org
Maine International Film Festival -
miff.org Cinetopia Film Festival - Detroit Voices
Short Film Competition -
Sanford International Film Festival -
cinetopiafestival.org/detroit-voices
sanfordfilmfest.com

Detroit International Festival of Animation Twin Cities Film Fest -
- difestofanim.com twincitiesfilmfest.org
East Lansing Film Festival - elff.com
Grand Rapids Feminist Film Festival - Mississippi
grfff.org Crossroads Film Festival -
Hell's Half Mile Film & Music Festival - crossroadsfilmfestival.com
hhmfest.com Fear Fete Horror Film Festival -
fearfete.com
Made-in-Michigan Film Festival -
madeinmichiganfilmfestival.org Grenada Afterglow -
Motor City Nightmares International Film grenadaafterglow.com
Festival - motorcitynightmares.com Magnolia Independent Film Festival -
Thriller! Chiller! - thrillerchiller.com magnoliafilmfest.com
Traverse City Film Festival - Oxford Film Festival - oxfordfilmfest.com

traversecityfilmfest.org Tupelo Film Festival -
tupelofilmfestival.net
Minnesota
Catalyst Content Festival - Missouri
catalystcontent.org Citizen Jane Film Festival -
citizenjanefilmfestival.org
Free Range Film Festival -
freerangefilm.com KC FilmFest International - kcfilmfest.org
Highway 61 Film Festival - Out Here Now: The Kansas City LGBT
highway61filmfestival.org Film Festival - outherenow.com
Milwaukee Short Film Festival - St. Louis International Film Festival -
milwaukeeindependentfilmsociety.org cinemastlouis.org
Minneapolis St. Paul International Film True/False - truefalse.org
Festival - mspfilm.org
Sound Unseen - soundunseen.com Montana
Speechless Film Festival - Big Sky Documentary Film Festival -
speechlessfilmfestival.com bigskyfilmfest.org
Square Lake Film & Music Festival - Flathead Lake International Cinemafest -
squarelakefestival.com flicpolson.com
St Cloud Film Fest - stcloudfilmfest.com Montana Film Festival -
Twin Cities Arab Film Festival - mizna.org/ montanafilmfestival.org
arabfilmfest
Twin Cities Black Film Festival - tcbff.org

Nebraska New Jersey
Film Streams Local Filmmakers Black Maria Film Festival -
Showcase - filmstreams.org blackmaria.org
Omaha Film Festival - Garden State Film Festival - gsff.org
omahafilmfestival.org
Golden Door International Film Festival -
The Prairie Lights Film Festival - goldendoorfilmfestival.org
prairielightsfilmfest.com
Jersey Shore Film Festival -
jerseyshorefilmfestival.com
Nevada Lighthouse International Film Festival -
Dam Short Film Festival - lighthousefilmfestival.org
damshortfilm.org Montclair Film Festival - montclairfilm.org
Las Vegas Black Film Festival - New Jersey International Film Festival -
lasvegasblackfilmfestival.com njfilmfest.com
Las Vegas Film Festival - lvff.com New Jersey Jewish Film Festival -
Laughlin International Film Festival - jccmetrowest.org
laughlinfilmfestival.com Passaic County Film Festival -
Nevada International Film Festival - passaiccountynj.org
nevadafilmfestival.com Rahway Reel Short Film Festival -
Nevada Women's Film Festival - culturecrawl.org
nevadawomensfilmfestival.com
New Mexico
New Brunswick Santa Fe Film Festival -
santafefilmfestival.com
Festival international du cinéma
francophone en Acadie - ficfa.com Santa Fe Independent Film Festival -
santafeindependentfilmfestival.com
New Hampshire Southwest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival

- swglff.com
Boston Science Fiction Film Festival &
Marathon - bostonscifi.com Way OUT West Film Fest -
wayoutwestfilmfest.com
Monadnock International Film Festival -
moniff.org
New York
New Hampshire Film Festival -
nhfilmfestival.com Animation Block Party -
animationblock.com
SNOB (Somewhat North of Boston) Film
Festival - snobfilmfestival.com Art of Brooklyn Film Festival - aobff.org

Athena Film Festival - Lower East Side Film Festival -
athenafilmfestival.com lesfilmfestival.com
BAMcinemaFest - bam.org Manhattan Film Festival -
manhattanff.com
Bicycle Film Festival -
bicyclefilmfestival.com Manhattan International Film Festival -
wya.net/programs/miff
Big Apple Film Festival and Screenplay
Competition - Margaret Mead Film Festival - amnh.org
bigapplefilmfestival.com
MCNY Film Festival - mcny.edu
Brooklyn Film Festival -
New Directors/New Films -
brooklynfilmfestival.org
newdirectors.org
Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival -
New York African Film Festival -
buffalodreamsfilmfest.com
africanfilmny.org
Bushwick Film Festival -
New York City Festival - nyicff.org
bushwickfilmfestival.com
New York City Short Film Festival -
Chelsea Film Festival - chelseafilm.org
nycshorts.com
Cinekink - cinekink.com
New York Film Festival - filmlinc.org
Coney Island Film Festival -
New York International Children's Film
coneyislandfilmfestival.com
Festival - nyicff.org
DOC NYC - docnyc.net
New York Latino Film Festival -
Documentary Fortnight at MOMA- nylatinofilmfestival.com
moma.org
New York Lift-Off Film Festival -
Hamilton International Film Festival - liftoff.network
hnyiff.com
New York No Limits Film Series -
Hamptons Doc Fest - newyorknolimits.com
hamptonsdocfest.com
New York Shorts International Film
Hamptons International Film Festival - Festival - nyshorts.net
hamptonsfilmfest.org
New York WILD Film Festival -
Harlem International Film Festival - nywildfilmfestival.com
harlemfilmfestival.com
NewFest: New York’s LGBTQ Film Festival
Iron Mule Short Comedy Film Festival — - newfest.org
ironmulefest.com
NewFilmmakers NY - newfilmmakers.com
LES, the Lower East Side Festival of the
NYC Downtown Short Film Festival -
Arts - theaterforthenewcity.net
duotheater.org
Long Beach International Film Festival -
Real Sisters of the Diaspora Film -
longbeachfilm.com
reelsisters.com

ReelAbilities Film Festival: New York - Mad Monster Party Film Festival -
reelabilities.org madmonster.com
SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s New York Short Nevermore Film Festival -
Film Showcase - sagaftra.foundation carolinatheatre.org
SOHO International Film Festival - North Carolina Black Film Festival -
sohofilmfest.com blackartsalliance.org
SR Socially Relevant Film Festival New North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film
York - ratedsrfilms.org Festival - carolinatheatre.org
Stony Brook Film Festival - Real to Reel International Film Festival -
stonybrookfilmfestival.com ccartscouncil.org
Tribeca Film Festival - tribecafilm.com Reel Out Charlotte Film Festival -
reelout.org
Urban Action Showcase International
Action Film Festival - RiverRun International Film Festival -
urbanactionshowcase.com riverrunfilm.com
Urbanworld Film Festival - urbanworld.org Surfalorus Film Festival - surfalorus.com
Video Art & Experimental Film Festival - Twin Rivers Media Festival -
videoart.net twinriversmediafestival.com
Wildlife Conservation Film Festival - Visions Film Festival & Conference -
wcff.org visionsffc.org
Williamsburg International Film & Music
Competition - willifest.com North Dakota
ZERO Film Festival- New York - Dakota Film Festival -
zerofilmfestival.com dakotafilmfestival.org
Fargo Fantastic Film Festival -
North Carolina valleycon.com
Cape Fear Independent Film Festival - Fargo Film Festival -fargofilmfestival.org
cfifn.org
Carrboro Film Festival - carrborofilm.org Ohio
Charlotte Film Festival - Athens International Film and Video
charlottefilmfestival.org Festival - athensfilmfest.org
Cucalorus Film Festival - cucalorus.org Canton Film Festival - cantonfilm.com
FilmSPARK - sparkcon.com Chagrin Documentary Film Festival -
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival - chagrinfilmfest.org
fullframefest.org Cincinnati Film Festival -
Hayti Heritage Film Festival - hayti.org cincinnatifilmfestival.com

Cleveland International Film Festival - Eastern Oregon Film Festival -
clevelandfilm.org eofilmfest.com
Cleveland Jewish FilmFest - Killer Valley Horror Film Festival -
mandeljcc.org killervalleyhorrorfilmfestival.com
Colony Short Film Festival - Klamath Independent Film Festival -
colonyfilmfestival.com http://klamathfilm.org
Columbus Moving Image Art Review McMinnville Short Film Festival -
(CMIAR) - msff.film
movingimageart.wordpress.com
Northwest Filmmakers' Festival -
Dance@30FPS - dance.osu.edu nwfilm.org
Film Festival of Columbus - Oregon Coast Film Festival -
filmfestivalofcbus.com oregoncoastfilmfestival.org
FilmDayton Festival - filmdayton.com Oregon Independent Film Festival -
oregonindependentfilmfest.com
Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival -
gcuff.org Portland EcoFilm Festival -
portlandecofilmfest.org
International Horror Hotel Film Festival
and Convention - horrorhotel.net Portland Film Festival -
portlandfilmfestival.com
Ohio Independent Festival -
ohiofilms.com Portland International Film Festival -
nwfilm.org
Short Sweet Film Fest -
shortsweetfilmfest.com Portland Motorcycle Film Festival -
pdxmotorcyclefilms.com
Oklahoma Portland Oregon Women's Film Festival -

powfilmfest.com
deadCenter Film Festival -
deadcenterfilm.org The Oregon State International Film
Festival - dasfilmfest.us/osiff
Red Dirt Film Festival - reddirtfilm.com
We Like 'Em Short - Animation and
Tulsa Overground Film Festival - Comedy Film Festival -
tulsaoverground.com welikeemshort.com
Oregon Pennsylvania
Ashland Independent Film Festival - Black Bear Film Festival -
ashlandfilm.org blackbearfilmfestival.squarespace.co
BendFilm Festival - bendfilm.org m
DisOrient Asian American Film Festival - Carnegie Mellon International Film

disorientfilm.org Festival - cmu.edu/faces

Community Underground Film Festival - Women in Film and Media Pittsuburgh -
facebook.com/WTCUFF wifmpit.org
FirstGlance Film Festival Philadelphia -
firstglancefilms.com Puerto Rico
FREEDOM SHORTS - Cine Campus International Film Festival -
averagesuperstarfilms.com cinecampuspr.com
Great Lakes International Film Festival - CineFiesta - fundacioncinepr.org
greatlakesfilmfest.com
EnFoque International Film Festival -
JFilm Festival - filmpittsburgh.org enfoquefilm.com
Lancaster International Short Film Lusca Caribbean International Fantastic
Festival - lancastershortfilmfest.com Film Fest - lusca.net
Media Film Festival - Rincon International Film Festival -
mediafilmfestival.org rinconfilm.com
New Hope Film Festival -
newhopefilmfestival.com Rhode Island
Philadelphia American Asian Film Festival Flickers' Rhode Island International Film
- phillyasianfilmfest.org Festival - film-festival.org
Philadelphia Film Festival - Ivy Film Festival - ivyfilmfestival.org
filmadelphia.org
NewportFilm - newportfilm.com
Philadelphia Independent Film Festival -
pifffilms.com Providence Children’s Film Festival -
providencechildrensfilmfestival.org
Philadelphia Latino Film Festival -
phlaff.org Providence Latin American Film Festival -
plaff.org
Philly Sketchfest Comedy Film Festival -
phillysketchfest.com SENE Film - Music & Arts Festival -
senefest.com
Pittsburgh Independent Film Festival -
pghindie.com
South Carolina
qFLIX Philadelphia - qflixphilly.com
Charleston International Film Festival -
Reel Q: Pittsburgh LGBTQ+ Film Festival - charlestoniff.org
reelq.org
Crimson Screen Horror Film Fest -
SouthSide Film Festival -
crimsonscreenfilmfest.com
southsidefilmfestival.com
Indie Grits Festival - indiegrits.org
West Chester International Short Film -
westchesterfilmfestival.com Myrtle Beach International Film Festival -
myrtlebeachfilmfestival.com

South Dakota Dallas International Film Festival -
dallasfilm.org
Black Hills Film Festival -
blackhillsfilmfestival.org Dallas VideoFest Alternative Fiction -
videofest.org
South Dakota Film Festival -
southdakotafilmfest.org Denton Black Film Festival -
dentonbff.com
Fantastic Fest - fantasticfest.com
Tennessee
Frightening Ass Film Fest - Hill Country Film Festival -
chattfilmfest.org hillcountryff.com
Indie Memphis - indiememphis.com Houston Asian American & Pacific

Islander Film Festival -
International Black Film Festival - ocahouston.org
ibffevents.com
Houston Comedy Film Festival -
Knoxville Film Festival - knoxfilmfest.com info.filmfestivalcircuit.com
Knoxville Horror Film Fest - Houston Film Commission's Texas
knoxvillehorrorfest.com Filmmaker's Showcase -
Lookout Wild Film Festival - houstonfilmcommission.com
lookoutfilmfestival.org Literally Short Film Festival -
Nashville Film Festival - literallyshort.com
nashvillefilmfestival.org Lone Star Film Festival -
lonestarfilmfestival.com
Texas Marfa Film Festival -
marfafilmfestival.com
All Genders Lifestyles and Identities Film
Festival - agliff.org Oak Cliff Film Festival -
oakclifffilmfestival.com
Austin Film Festival -
austinfilmfestival.com QCInema Fort Worth- qcinema.org
Austin Revolution Film Festival - Rockport Film Festival -
austinrevolution.com rockportfilmfestival.com
Boomtown Film and Music Festival - San Antonio CineFestival - cinefestival.org
boomtownfestival.com
San Antonio Q Fest: The San Antonio
Cine Las Americas International Film LGBTQ International Film Festival -
Festival - cinelasamericas.org pridesanantonio.org
Cinema Touching Disability - South by Southwest (SXSW) - sxsw.com
ctdfilmfest.org
South Texas Underground Film Festival -
CineSol Film Festival - cinesol.com stuftx.org

Texas Frightmare Weekend - Mountaintop Film Festival -
texasfrightmareweekend.com mountaintopfilmfestival.com
Thin Line Fest - thinline.us Vermont International Film Festival -
vtiff.org
Topaz Film Festival by Women in Film
Dallas - wifdallas.org Women’s Film Festival -
womensfilmfestival.org
USA Film Festival - usafilmfestival.com
Victoria TX Independent Film Festival -
vtxiff.com Virginia
Alexandria Film Festival -
alexfilmfest.com
Utah
GI Film Festival - gifilmfestival.com
Damn These Heels LGBTQ Film Festival -
utahfilmcenter.org James River Short Film Showcase -
jamesriverfilm.org
DOCUTAH International Documentary
Film Festival - docutah.com Middleburg Film Festival -
middleburgfilm.org
Fear No Film - uaf.org
Northern Virginia International Films &
FilmQuest Festival - filmquestfest.com
Music Festival - novafilmfest.com
LDS Film Festival - ldsfilmfest.com
Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival -
Red Rock Film Festival - jccnv.org
redrockfilmfestival.com
Richmond Dance Festival -
Slamdance Film Festival - dogtowndancetheatre.com
slamdance.com
Richmond International Film Festival -
Sundance Film Festival - sundance.org rvafilmfestival.com
Utah Dance Film Festival - Virginia Film Festival -
utahdancefilmfestival.org virginiafilmfestival.org
Utah Film Festival and Awards - Washington West International Film
theutahfilmawards.com Festival - wwfilmfest.com
World Music and Independent Film
Vermont Festival - wmiff.net
Brattleboro Film Festival -
brattleborofilmfestival.org Washington
Green Mountain Film Festival - Gig Harbor Film Festival -
gmffestival.org gigharborfilm.org
Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival - Seattle International Film Festival -
middfilmfest.org siff.net

Seattle Jewish Film Festival - Milwaukee Film Festival - mkefilm.org
seattlejewishfilmfestival.org
Seattle Jewish Film Festival - Wyoming
seattlejewishfilmfestival.org
307 Film Festival - 307filmfestival.com
Social Justice Film Festival -
socialjusticefilmfestival.org Jackson Wild - jacksonwild.org
Tacoma Film Festival - Sheridan WYO Film Festival -

sheridanwyofilmfest.org
tacomafilmfestival.com
Dawson City International Short Film
Tacoma Film Festival -
tacomafilmfestival.com Festival - dawsonfilmfest.com
Weyauwega International Film Festival -

wegafilm.com
West Virginia
American Conservation Film Festival -
conservationfilmfest.org
West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film
Festival -
mountaineershortfilmfest.org
WV FILMmakers Festival -
wvfilmmakersfestival.org
Wisconsin
Beloit International Film Festival -
beloitfilmfest.org
Beloit International Film Festival -
beloitfilmfest.org
Big Water Film Festival -
bigwaterfilmfestival.org
Door County Short Film Festival -
cometosisterbay.com
Flyway Film Festival -
flywayfilmfestival.org
Green Bay Film Festival -
gbfilmfestival.org

Canada Vancouver International Film Festival -
viff.org
Vancouver International Women in Film
Alberta Festival - womeninfilm.ca
Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Vancouver Island Short Film Festival -
Festival - banffcentre.ca visff.com
Calgary International Film Festival - Vancouver Jewish Film Festival - vjff.org

calgaryfilm.com Vancouver Latin American Film Festival -
Edmonton Short Film Festival - esff.ca vlaff.org
GIRAF International Festival of Vancouver Queer Film -

Independent Animation - giraffest.ca queerfilmfestival.ca
Mosquers Film Festival - Vancouver Short Film Festival - vsff.com

themosquers.com Victoria Film Festival -
PARTICLE + WAVE Media Arts Festival - victoriafilmfestival.com
emmedia.ca Whistler Film Festival + Summit -
Reel Shorts Film Festival - reelshorts.ca whistlerfilmfestival.com
British Columbia Manitoba

Antimatter - antimatter.ca Canadian International Comedy Film
Festival - shartfilmfestival.com
BC Student Film Festival - bcsff.com
Gimli Film Festival - gimlifilm.com
Canada International Film Festival -
canadafilmfestival.com Winnipeg Real To Reel Film Festival -
winnipegfilmfestival.com
Cinema Spectacular -
cinemaspectacular.com
DOXA Documentary Film Festival - Newfoundland & Labrador
doxafestival.ca St. John’s International Women’s Film
Festival - womensfilmfestival.com
New West Film Fest - newwestfilmfest.ca
Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for
Youth - r2rfestival.org Northwest Territories
Yellowknife International Film Festival -
Reel Youth Film Festival - reelyouth.ca
ykfilmfest.com
Short Circuit - shortcircuitfilmfestival.com
Spark Animation - sparkanimation.ca Nova Scotia
Vancouver Badass Film Festival - Devour! The Food Film Fest -
vbaff.com devourfest.com
FIN Atlantic International Film Festival - Toronto Shorts International Film Festival
finfestival.ca - torontoshorts.com
Lunenburg Doc Fest - WILDsound Feedback Film and
lunenburgdocfest.com Screenplay Festival -
wildsoundfestival.com
Silver Wave Film Festival - swfilmfest.com
Prince Edward Island

Ontario
Charlottetown Film Festival -
ReelHeART International Film and
charlottetownfilmfest.com
Screenplay Festival - reelheart.com
AGH Film Festival - aghfilmfest.com
Quebec
Barrie Film Festival - barriefilmfestival.ca
CineMania Film Festival -
Canadian Film Fest - Toronto - festivalcinemania.com
canfilmfest.ca
Concordia Film Festival -
Cinéfest Sudbury International Film concordiafilmfestival.com
Festival - cinefest.com
Derapage - derapage.ca
Female Eye Film Festival -
femaleeyefilmfestival.com Fantasia International Film Festival -
fantasiafestival.com
Guelph Film Festival -
image+nation. festival film lgbtqueer
guelphfilmfestival.ca
Montreal - image-nation.org
Hamilton Film Festival - Canadian Film
Market - hamiltonfilmfestival.com Just For Laughs Eat My Shorts -
comedypro.hahaha.com
Hexploitation Film Festival -
hexfilmfest.com Montreal Festival du nouveau cinéma -
nouveaucinema.ca
Hot Docs Canadian International
Documentary Festival - hotdocs.ca Montreal International Black Film Festival
- montrealblackfilm.com
Shorts That Are Not Pants -
shortsnotpants.com Montreal World Film Festival - ffm-
montreal.org
TAIS Animation Showcase - tais.ca
YoungCuts - youngcuts.com
Toronto After Dark: Horror, Sci-Fi, Action &
Cult Film Festival -
torontoafterdark.com
Saskatchewan
Toronto Beach Film Festival (TBFF) -
torontobeachesfilmfest.com Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival -
skfilmfest.com
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) -
tiff.net

Notable Festivals in Canada 216
Notable Festivals Expotoons - expotoons.com
FIDBA - fidba.com.ar
Around the World FIVA International Video Art Festival -
fivafestival.com.ar
Tandil Cortos - tandilcortos.com
Afghanistan estiFreak - festifreak.com.ar
Afghanistan International Human Rights Mar de Plata International Film Festival -

Film Festival - ahrfestival.org mardelplatafilmfest.com
Pehuajo International Film Festival-
Albania festicinepehuajo.wixsite.com
Balkan Film Food Festival - balkan3f.com Transterritorial Film Festival Underground

- cineunder.wordpress.com
European Animated Film Festival-
anifestrozafa.org
Armenia
International film festival for children and
young people - anifestrozafa.org One Shot Film Festival - accea.info
KO:SH Film Fest - koshfest.com FRESCO Annual Festival of Modern Art

and Spiritual Films - fresco.am
Tirana International Film Festival -
tiranafilmfest.com International Women`s Film Festival -
kinfestival.com
Argentina ReAnimania Int. Animation Film & Comics

Art Festival of Yerevan -
Argentina LGBT International Film reanimania.com
Festival -
cinediversidadygenero.blogspot.com. Sose International Film Festival -
ar sosefestival.com
Buenos Aires International Independent

Film Festival (BAFICI) - Australia
festivales.buenosaires.gob.ar Brisbane International Film Festival -
Buenos Aires Rojo Sangre - biff.com.au
festivalrojosangre.com.ar Byron Bay International Film Festival -
CINEVERSATIL - cineversatil.com bbff.com.au
Córdoba International Animation Festival Canberra Short Film Festival -

- animafestival.com.ar csff.com.au
Espacio Queer Film Fest - Darwin International Film Festival -

espacioqueer.com.ar diff.net.au
Electric Shorts - electricshorts.com.au Bangladesh
Flickerfest International Short Film International InterUniversity Short Film
Festival - flickerfest.com.au Festival - dufs.org
Melbourne International Film Festival -
miff.com.au Belgium
Melbourne Lift-Off Film Festival - lift-off- Brussels Independent Film Festival -
festival.com brusselsfilmfestival.com
Melbourne Underground Film Festival - Brussels International Fantastic Film
muff.com.au Festival - bifff.net
Monter Fest - monsterfest.com.au Docville International Documentary Film
Over the Fence Comedy Film Festival - Festival - docville.be
overthefence.com.au Festival International Nature Namur -
Queensland Touring Film Festival - festivalnaturenamur.be
qtff.com.au Film Fest Gent - filmfestival.be
St Kilda Film Festival - International Francophone Film Festival
stkildafilmfestival.com.au Namur - fiff.be
Sydney Film Festival - sff.org.au Leuven Internation Short Film Festival -
Sydney Underground Film Festival - kortfilmfestival.be
suff.com.au
The Other Film Festival - Bolivia
otherfilmfestival.com
Oruro Film Festival - orurofilmfest.com
Austria Bosnia & Herzegovina

Austrian Filmfestival -
Youth Film Festival Sarajevo -
austrianfilmfestival.com
omladinski.ba
K3 Film Festival - k3festival.com
Prvi Kadar- International Film Festival -
Vienna International Film Festival lutfest.com
(Viennale) - viennale.at
Jahorina Fim Festival - jahorinafest.org
VIS Vienna Shorts - viennashorts.com Sarajevo Film Festival - sff.ba
Bahamas Brazil
Bahamas International Film Festival - Anim!Arte Festival - vouanimarte.com.br
bintlfilmfest.com
Brazil Cinefest - brazilcinefest.com

It's All True International Documentary Shanghai International Film & TV Festival
Film Festival - etudoverdade.com.br - siff.com
Rio de Janeirio International Short Film
Festival (aka Curta Cinema) - Colombia
curtacinema.com.br
Cartagena International Film Festival -
São Paulo International Film Festival - ficcifestival.com
mostra.org
The Equinoxio Film Festival -
facebook.com/FestivalEquinoxio
Bulgaria Croatia
In the Palace - inthepalace.com Animafest Zagreb: World Festival of
Mind the Indie Film Festival - mtiff.org Animated Film - animafest.hr
Sofia Biting Docs - sofiabitingdocs.com International Sound and Film Music

Festival - isfmf.com
World Festival of Animated Film Varna -
varnafest.org Motovun Film Festival -
motovunfilmfestival.com
Split Film Festival / International Festival
Burkina Faso of New Film - splitfilmfestival.hr
Pan-African Film Festival of
Vox Feminae - voxfeminae.net
Ouagadougou: FESPACO - fespaco.bf
Zagreb Film Festival - zff.hr
Cambodia
Cyprus
Cambodia's International Film Festival -
cambofest.com Countryside Animafest Cyprus -
animafest.com.cy
Chile Cyprus Film Days: International Festival -

cyprusfilmdays.com
Arica Nativa Rural Film Festival -
aricanativa.cl/home International Short Film Festival of
Cyprus - isffc.com.cy
Proceso De Error - inve.cl
China Czech Republic

China International Conference of Academia Film Olomouc - afo.cz
Science & Education Producers - Animanie - animanie.cz
cicsep.com
EKOFILM - ekofilm.cz
Guangzhou International Documentary
Film Festival - gzdoc.cn International Festival of Outdoor Films -
outdoorfilms.cz
Notable Festivals Around the World 219

Ji.hlava International Documentary Film
Festival - ji-hlava.com Ecuador
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival - Encuentros del Otro Cine -
kviff.com festivaledoc.org
Life Sciences Film Festival - lsff.cz
Mlada Kamera - mladakamera.cz Egypt
Zlaty Voci - zlatyvoci.cz Cairo International Film Festival -
ciff.org.eg
Zlin Film Festival- International Festival
for Children and Youth - zlinfest.cz Cairo Video Festival - cvf.medrar.org
Ismailia International Film Festival -
Democratic Republic of the ismailiafilmfest.com
Congo
Congo International Film Festival - Estonia
yoleafrica.org Black Nights Film Festival - poff.ee
Just Film Youth and Children's Film
Denmark Festival - justfilm.ee
60 Seconds Short Film Festival -
60sec.org Finland
Copenhagen Short Film Festival - csff.dk DocPoint - docpoint.info
CPH:DOX - cphdox.dk Tampere Film Festival -
tamperefilmfestival.fi
FOKUS Art Video Festival -
fokusfestival.dk
OFF Odense International Film Festival - France
filmfestival.dk ACID at Cannes - lacid.org
The Next Film Festival - thenextfilm.dk Annecy International Animation Film
Festival - annecy.org
Dominican Republic Cannes Film Festival - festival-
Dominican Global Film Festival - cannes.com
tamoencine.org
Clermont-Ferrand International Short
Festival Internacional de Santo Domingo Film Festival - clermont-filmfest.org
Mujares en Corto - facebook.com/
Critic's Week at Cannes -
festivalmujeresencorto
semainedelacritique.com
Deauville American Film Festival -
festival-deauville.com

Director's Fortnight at Cannes - "International Festival of Camermen
quinzaine-realisateurs.com ""Golden Eye""" - goldeneye.ge
ÉCU - The European Independent Film TOFUZI International Animated Film
Festival - ecufilmfestival.com Festival - adf.ge
Encounters Short Film Festival Cabestany
- imageincabestany.org Germany
Festival du Court-Metrage d'Auch - Backup & Beyond - backup-festival.de
festivalcourtauch.com
Berlin International Film Festival -
Festival du Film Merveilleux - festival-film- berlinale.de
merveilleux.com
Braunschweig Int’l filmfest - filmfest-
Festivals des 3 Contintents - braunschweig.de
3continents.com
Cine-Maniacs Filmfest - filmhaus-
Fide - International Festival of Emergent huber.de
Documentary - fide.festivaldoc.com
Der Phantastische Trashfilm -
Films De Femmes - filmsdefemmes.com tff.spontitotalfilm.com
Hallucinations Collectives - DOK Leipzig - dok-leipzig.de
hallucinations-collectives.com
Fantasy Filmfest - fantasyfilmfest.com
Intergalactics Sc-Fi Festival -
Filmfest Homochrom - homochrom.de
intergalactiques.net
New Cinemas Film Festival - HARD:LINE International Film Festival -
nouveaucine.com hardline-festival.de
Paris Ciné Fantastique - pifff.fr Independent Days International Film

Festival - independentdays-
Paris Courts Devant - courtsdevant.com filmfest.com
Paris International Animation Film International Filmfest Emden-Norderney -
Festival - filmfest-emden.de
parisfestivalpiaff.wixsite.com
International Short Film Festival
The Paris Art & Movie Awards (PAMA) - Oberhausen - kurzfilmtage.de
parisartandmovieawards.com
Low & No Budget Video Film Festival -
Très Court International Film Festival - film-sharing.net
trescourt.com
Oldenburg International Film Festival -
filmfest-oldenburg.de
Georgia
OpenEyes Filmfest Marburg - openeyes-
Batumi International Art-House Film filmfest.de
Festival (BIAFF) - biaff.org
Short Film Festival Jena - cellulart.de

Snowdance Independent Film Festival -
snowdance.net Guatemala
Sound Track Cologne - Icaro International Film Festival in Central
soundtrackcologne.de America - festivalicaro.com
Greece Honduras
Aegean Film Festival - aegeanff.com Painting the Spectrum LGBTQ & Film
Athens Animfest - athensanimfest.eu Festival -
spectrumguyana.wordpress.com
Athens Digital Arts Festival - adaf.gr
International Short Film Festival of El
Athens International Film Festival - aiff.gr Heraldo - elheraldo.hn
Bridges International Film Festival -
piff.cineartfestival.eu Hong Kong
International Asto Short Film Festival - Chinese Documentary Festival -
astopatras.gr/ visiblerecord.com
International Documentary Festival of Hong Kong 10th PUFF Film Festival - puff-
Ierapetra Awards - festival.org
festivalierapetra.gr
Hong Kong International Film Festival -
International Micro µ Festival - hkiff.org.hk
micromfestival.gr
Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival -
Outview Film Festival - outview.gr hklgff.hk
Peloponnese International Documentary
Festival -
Hungary
peloponnisosdocfestival.com
Anilogue International Animation Festival
Thessaloniki Documentary Festival -
- anilogue.com
filmfestival.gr
BuSho (Budapest Short) Film Festival -
Thessaloniki International Film Festival -
busho.hu
filmfestival.gr
International Film Festival of Fine Arts -
Thessaloniki International LGBTIQ Film
festival.tiszamozi.hu
Festival - lgbtq-iff.gr
International Scientific Film Festival -
TISFF Thess International and Intimate - festival.tiszamozi.hu
tisff.eu
Kecskemét Animation Film Festival -
kaff.hu/news/show
MEDIAWAVE Film and Music Gathering -
mediawavefestival.hu

Indian International Deaf Film Festival -
iidff.org
Iceland International Film Festival of India, Goa -

iffigoa.org
Northern Wave International Film Festival
- northernwavefestival.com Jagran Film Festival - jff.co.in
Jagran Film Festival (JFF - jff.co.in
Jaipur International Film Festival -
India jiffindia.org
Aakruti My Creation International Film Jeevika: Asia Livelihood Documentary
Festival - aiffarena.com Festival - jeevika.org
Brahmaputra Valley Film Festival - bvff.in Jehlum Short & Long Film Festival -
Chennai International Film Festival (CIFF) jehlumff.blogspot.in
- chennaifilmfest.com Kashish Mumbai International Queer
Chinh India Kids Film Festival - chinh.in Film Festival - mumbaiqueerfest.com
CMS Vatavaran – International Kerala International Documentary and

Environment and Wildlife Film Short Film Festival - idsffk.in
Festival - cmsvatavaran.org Mumbai Film Festival -
CMS, International Children's Film mumbaifilmfestival.com
Festival - cmsfilms.org Mumbai Shorts International Film
Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival - Festival - miniboxoffice.com/
educationexpo.tv mumbaishortsinternationalfilmfestiv
al
Darbhanga IFF (Darbhanga International
Film Festival) - darbhangaiff.in Noida International Film Festival -
miniboxoffice.com/
Delhi International Film Festival (DIFF) - noidainternationalfilmfestival
delhiinternationalfilmfestival.com
Pune International Film Festival (PIFF) -
Delhi Shorts International Film Festival - piffindia.com
miniboxoffice.com/
delhishortsinternationalfilmfestival Pune Short Film Festival -
marathichitrapatparivar.com
Gujarat International Short Film Festival
- giffindia.org Quotes from the Earth - toxicslink.org
IAWRT Asian Women's Film Festival Smita Patil Documentary and Short Film
2019-15th edition - Festival - spiffpune.in
iawrtindia.blogspot.com Woodpecker International Film Festival
India Cine Film Festival - (WIFF) - woodpeckerfilmfestival.in
miniboxoffice.com/
indiancinefilmfestival

Waterford Film Festival -
waterfordfilmfestival.net
Indonesia Yellow Fever Indie Film Festival -
Bali International Film Festival - theyfiff.wix.com
balinale.com
Bali International Film Festival -
balinale.com Isle of Man
Festival Film Dokumenter - ffd.or.id Isle of Man Film Festival -
RKIPEL International Documentary and isleofmanfilmfestival.com
Experimental Film Festival -
arkipel.org
Israel
Doc Aviv - docaviv.co.il
Ireland
Haifa Film Festival - haifaff.co.il
Cork Film Festival - corkfilmfest.org
Icon Festival For Science Fiction &
Dingle International Film Festival - Fantasy - iconfestival.org.il
dinglefilmfestival.com
Jerusalem Film Festival - jff.org.il
Dublin Feminist Film Festival -
dublinfeministfilmfestival.com Spirit Film Festival - spiritfestival.co.il
Dublin International Film Festival - diff.ie TLVFest - The Tel Aviv International LGBT
Film Festival - tlvfest.com
Dublin International Short Film and
Music Festival - disfmf.ie
Italy
Fastnet Film Festival -
fastnetfilmfestival.com Amarcort Film Festival - amarcort.it
Fresh Film Festival - freshfilmfestival.net Asian Film Festival 16 -
asianfilmfestival.info
Galway Film Fleadh -
galwayfilmfleadh.com Asolo Art Film Festival -
asoloartfilmfestival.com
Gaze International LGBT Film Festival -
gaze.ie Biennale MArteLive - martelive.it
IFI Documentary Festival - ifi.ie Cartoon Club - cartoonclubrimini.com
Kerry International Film Festival - Cervino CineMountain -
kerryfilmfestival.com cervinocinemountain.com
Offline Film Festival - Chlorophyll Film Festival - festambiente.it
offlinefilmfestival.com
CinemAmbiente - Environmental Film
Silk Road International Film Festival - Festival - cinemambiente.it
silkroadfilmfestival.com

CinemAmbiente – Environmental Film MISFF4YOU -
Festival - cinemambiente.it filmvideomontecatini.jimdo.com
Cortinametraggio - cortinametraggio.it MitreoFilmFestival - mitreofilmfestival.it
Dieciminuti Film Festival - MoliseCinema Film Festival -
dieciminutifilmfestival.com molisecinema.it
Dieciminuti Film Festival - dieciminuti.it Mostra Cinema Taranto -
mostracinemataranto.com
Fabriano Film Fest - fabrianofilmfest.it
Napoli - CortiSonanti International Short
Fantafestival - fanta-festival.it
Film Festival - cortisonanti.it
Festival Alto Vicentino -
Napoli Film Festival -
festivalaltovicentino.it
napolifilmfestival.com
Festival del Cinema dei Diritti Umani di
Pentedattilo Film Festival -
Napoli - cinenapolidiritti.it
pentedattilofilmfestival.net
Festival Internazionale del Cinema d'Arte
Ravenna Nightmare Film Fest -
- festivalcinemadarte.com
ravennanightmare.it
Fotogramma d'Oro Short Film Festival -
Roma Creative Contest -
fotogrammadoro.com
romacreativecontest.com
FrontDoc - frontdoc.wixsite.com
Rome Independent Film Festival - riff.it
Imaginaria - imaginariafilmfestival.org
Salento International Film Festival -
International Archaeology Film Festival - salentofilmfestival.com
rassegnacinemaarcheologico.it
Salento International Film Festival -
Ischia Film Festival - ischiafilmfestival.it salentofilmfestival.com
Ischia Film Festival - ischiafilmfestival.it Scrittura e Immagine Short Film Festival -
premiflaiano.com
Lecce Film Fest-Festival del Cinema
Invisibile - leccefilmfest.it ShorTs - International Film Festival -
maremetraggio.com
Linea d’Ombra Festival -
lineadombrafestival.it/2017 SiciliAmbiente Film Festival -
festivalsiciliambiente.it
Logo Linea d'Ombra Festival-CortoEuropa
Compet - festivalculturegiovani.it SorsiCorti Short Film Festival -
sorsicorti.it
Lovers Film Festival - loversff.com
Sulmona International Film Festival -
MIFF Awards (Milan Int'l Film Festival
sulmonafilmfestival.com
Awards) - miffawards.it
Terra di Tutti Film Festival -
Milan International Film Festival Awards -
terradituttifilmfestival.org
miff.it
TOHorror Film Fest - tohorrorfilmfest.it
MISFF - filmvideomontecatini.it

Torino Film Festival - torinofilmfest.org NDU International Film Festival -
ndu.edu.lb/internationalfilmfestival/
Universo Corto - universocorto.org
index.htm
Venice International Film Festival -
labiennale.org
Lithuania
Versi di Luce - officinakreativa.org
Šoblės Kino Festivalis -
Visione Corte International Short Film soble.filmtv.lmta.lt
Festival - visionicorte.it
Vilnius International Short Film Festival -
filmshorts.lt
Japan
Kineko International Children's Film Luxembourg
Festival - kineko.tokyo Queer Loox - queerloox.wordpress.com
Sapporo International Short Film Festival
& Market - sapporoshortfest.jp
Mexico
Short Shorts Film Festival -
Cinema Planeta - cinemaplaneta.org
shortshorts.org
CutOut Fest International Animation and
Tokyo International Film Festival -
Digital Art Festival - cutoutfest.com
tiff-jp.net
EcoFilm Festival - ecofilmfestival.org
Tokyo Lift-Off Film Festival -
lift-off-festivals.com Feratum International Fantastic Film
Festival - feratumfilmfest.com
Toyama International Film Festival -
toyamafilmfest.wixsite.com/mysite Festival Sayulita - festivalsayulita.com
Yamagata International Documentary Guadalajara International Film Festival
Film Festival - yidff.jp (FICG) - ficg.mx
Guanajuato International Film Festiva -
Kenya giff.mx
FilmAid Film Festival - filmaid.org Hidalgo Film Fest - cinehidalgo.org
Slum Film Festival 2019 - Huatulco Film& Food Festival -

slumfilmfestival.net filmfoodfestival.com
Macabro: Mexico City International Horror
Film Festival - macabro.mx
Lebanon
Monterrey International Film Festival -
Cabriolet Film Festival -
cabrioletfilmfestival.com monterreyfilmfestival.com
Lebanese Film Festival - Morelia International Film Festival -

lebanesefilmfestival.org moreliafilmfest.com
Oaxaca FilmFest - oaxacafilmfest.com

Short Creative International Short Film New Zealand
Showcase - facebook.com/
cortocreativoUDCI Doc Edge - docedge.nz
Shorts Mexico - International Short Film NZ Mountain Film & Book Festival -
Festival of Mexico - mountainfilm.nz
shortsmexico.com Show Me Shorts Film Festival -
ULTRAcinema - ultracinema.x10.mx showmeshorts.co.nz
Travelling Shorts Film Festival -
elliotjoshuaweir.wixsite.com
Netherlands
Wairoa Māori Film Festival - kiaora.tv
Amsterdam International Film Festival -
amsterdamfilmfestival.com
Craft in Focus Film Festival - Nigeria
ambachtinbeeldfestival.nl Africa International Film FestivaL -
DOCfeed - Documentary Festival afriff.com
Eindhoven - docfeed.nl Eko International Film Festival -
Eindhoven Film Festival - ekoiff.org
eindhovenfilmfestival.nl
Go Short International Short Film
Festival Nijmegen - goshort.nl North Macedonia
Imagine Film Festival - Cinedays Festival of European Film -
imaginefilmfestival.nl cinedays.mk
International Documentary Film Festival Animation Volda Festival -
Amsterdam - idfa.nl animationvolda.no
International Film Festival Rotterdam -
iffr.com
Norway
KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival -
Bollywood Festival Norway -
klik.amsterdam
bollywoodfest.com
Leiden International Film Festival -
Minimalen Short Film Festival -
leidenfilmfestival.nl minimalen.com
Leiden International Short Film Nordic Youth Film Festival - NUFF -
Experience - lisfe.nl nuff.no
TranScreen Transgender Film Festival Oslo/Fusion International Film Festival -
Amsterdam - transcreen.eu
oslofusion.no

Pakistan Euroshorts Young Filmmakers -
euroshorts.pl
FiLUMS - International Film Festival -
filums.lums.edu.pk International Animation Film Festival -
Gdansk 2018 - mffa.pl
Lahore International Children’s Film
Festival - lahorechildrenfilm.com International Film Festival Etiuda &
Anima - etiudaandanima.pl
International Film Festival ZOOM -
Panama
zoomfestival.pl
AcampaDoc International Documentary
Film Festival - acampadoc.com International Young Audience Film
Festival Ale Kino! - alekino.com
Hayah International Short Film Festival of
Panama - festivalhayah.com Krakow Film Festival -
krakowfilmfestival.pl
Lublin Film Festival - lff.lublin.pl
Peru
Maritime Films Festival JachtFilm -
Infierno Festival in the Andes -
jachtfilm.pl
infiernofest.com
Mountain Film Meetings -
InkaFest Mountain Film Festival -
spotkania.zakopane.pl
inkafest.com
Off Camera - offcamera.pl
International Gay Lesbian Film Festival -
outfestperu.com Short Waves Festival - shortwaves.pl
Swidnica Film Festival Spektrum -
Philippines spektrumfestiwal.pl
Animahenasyon Film Festival - Szczecin Film Festival -

animahenasyon.com szczecinfilmfestival.pl
Cebu International Film Festival - Warsaw Film Festival - wff.pl

cidff.org Warsaw Jewish Film Festival - wjff.pl
QCinema Film Festival - qcinema.ph
Portugal
Poland Caminhos Film Festival - caminhos.info
AfryKamera African Film Festival in DocLisboa - doclisboa.org
Warsaw - afrykamera.pl
Lisbon & Sintra Film Festival - leffest.com
Ars Independent Festival -
arsindependent.pl Motellx - Lisbon Internation Horror Film
Festival - motelx.org
Camerimage International Film Festival -
camerimage.pl Vistacurta - vistacurta.pt
Ekofilm Festival - ndk.pl

Romania Serbia
Comedy Cluj International Festival - Balkanima - European Animated Film
comedycluj.ro Festival - balkanima.org
Full Moon - Horror & Fantasy Film International Queer Film Festival -
Fantasy - lunaplinafestival.ro merlinka.com
Hyperfest International Student Film International Short Film Festival – Film
Festival - hyperionfilmfestival.ro Front. - filmfront.rs
Ploiesti International Film Festival - International Underwater Film Festival
ploiestifilmfestival.ro Belgrade - kpa.co.rs
SFG (Serile Filmului Gay / Gay Film Martovski Festival - martovski.rs
Nights) - serilefilmuluigay.ro
MikroFAF - satibara.com
Short to the Point -
Seize the Film - uhvatifilm.org
theshortfilmfestival.com
Transylvania International Film Festival -
tiff.ro Singapore
Big Eyes, Big Minds - Singapore
International Children's Film Festival
Russia - bigeyesbigminds.com
Artdocfest International - artdocfest.com
Cartoons Underground -
Beat Film Festival - beatfilmfestival.ru cartoonsunderground.com
I see God - iseegod.org Love and Pride Film Festival -
singaporefilmsociety.com
IFF Message to Man -
message2man.com Singapore International Film Festiva -
sgiff.com
Moscow International Film Festival -
moscowfilmfestival.ru
Multivision Festival - multivision.ru Slovakia
Russian International Horror Film Festival Envirofilm - envirofilm.sk
- horrorpremia.com IFF Ekotopfilm - ekotopfilm.sk
Vagrant Film Festival - International Documentary Film Festival
vagrant.kinaklub.org One World - jedensvet.sk
International Mountain and Adventure
Rwanda Film Festival - horyamesto.sk
Rwanda Film Festival -
rwandafilmfestival.net Slovenia
Enimation Festival - enimation.si

Grossmann Fantastic Film and Wine Spain
Festival - grossmann.si/home
Barcelona International Environmental
Luksuz Cheap Film Festival - luksuz.si Film Festival (FICMA) - ficma.com
ZOOM - pionirski-dom.si Bilbao International Short and
Documentary Film Festival -
zinebi.com
South Africa
Cerdanya Film Festival -
Cape Town International Film Market &
cerdanyafilmfestival.cat
Festival - filmfestival.capetown
CLAM, Catalonia Social Film Festival -
Durban International Film Festival -
clamfestival.org
durbanfilmfest.co.za
Cortoons Festival Gandia - cortoons.es
Encounters South African Documentary
Film Festival - encounters.co.za Cryptshow Festival -
cryptshow.blogspot.com
Jozi Film Festival - jozifilmfestival.co.za
Curtas Fest - curtas.org/festival
Out in Africa - oia.co.za
Documentamadrid -
X-Fest - xfest.org
documentamadrid.com
El Ojo Cojo International Film Fest -
South Korea elojocojo.org
Bucheon International Animation Festival Evolution Mallorca International Film
- biaf.or.kr Festival - evolutionfilmfestival.com
Busan International Film Festival - biff.kr Fancine - Fantastic Film Festival -
Busan International Kids and Youth Film fancine.org
Festival 2018 - biky.or.kr Fangofest Amposta -
DMZ International Documentary Film fantasticgorefestivalamposta.com
Festival - dmzdocs.com Festival de Cine de Castilla-La Mancha -
Indie-AniFest (Korea Independent fecicam.com
Animation Film Festival) - Festival Internacional de Cortometrajes
ianifest.org Almeria en Corto -
Jeonju International Film Festival - festivaldealmeria.com
eng.jiff.or.kr Festival Solo Para Cortos -
Korea Queer Culture Festival(KQCF) - soloparacortos.org
kqff.co.kr FIRE Mostra - mostrafire.com
Seoul Eco Film Festival (SEFF) - seff.kr Gijón International Film Festival -
gijonfilmfestival.com
Hemoglozine - hemoglozine.com

Horrorvision Trash Film Festival - Sweden
laoscuraceremonia.wix.com
Lund International Architecture Film
Huesca International Film Festival - Festival - archfilmlund.se
huesca-filmfestival.com
Lund International Factastic Film Festival
Human Rights Film Festival Barcelona/ - fff.se
Paris/NYC - fcdhbcn.com
Monsters of Film - monstersoffilm.se
Ibiza IFF International Film Festival -
Nordisk Panorama -
ibizaiff.es
nordiskpanorama.com
IKUSKA - ikuska.eus/
Stockholm International Film Festival -
International Film and Human Rights stockholmfilmfestival.se
Festival of Valencia - Humans Fest -
humansfest.com
Switzerland
International Film Music Festival of
Tenerife, FIMUCITÉ - fimucite.com Ascona Film Festival -
asconafilmfestival.org
LesGaiCineMad Madrid International Gay
and Lesbian Film Festival - Corto Helvetico al Femminile - festival-
lesgaicinemad.com chf.ch
Madrid International Film Festival - Fantoche International Animation Film

madridinternationalfilmfestival.com Festival - fantoche.ch
Manlleu Film Festival - Göteborg Film Festival - giff.se

manlleufilmfestival.com Gstaadfilm Festival - gstaadfilm.com
Mecal - mecalbcn.org Lausanne Underground Film & Music
Molins Film Festival - Festival - luff.ch
molinsfilmfestival.com Locarno Film Festival - locarnofestival.ch
Mountain Nature Adventure Film Festival Luststreifen Film Festival - luststreifen.ch
- memorialmarialuisa.com
OtherMovie Lugano Film Festival -
Radio City International Short Film othermovie.ch
Festival - radiocityvalencia.es/cine
Porny Days Film Art Festival -
San Sebastian International Film Festival pornydays.ch
- sansebastianfestival.com
shnit Worldwide Shortfilmfestival -
Sax International Film Festival - shnit.org
festivalsax.com
Tibet Film Festival - tibetfilmfestival.org
Sitges International Fantastic Film
Festival of Catalonia - Upcoming Film Makers- Schweizer
sitgesfilmfestival.com Jungfilmfestival Luzern - upcoming-
filmmakers.ch

Videox Festival - videoex.ch Green Screen Environmental Film
Festival (T&T) - greenscreentt.com
Visions du Reel - visionsdureel.ch
Trinidad + Tobago Film Festival -
Zurich Film Festival - zff.com
ttfilmfestival.com
Taiwan Tunisia
Hsin-Yi Chidren's Animation Awards -
Carthage Film Festival - jcctunisie.org
kimy.com.tw
Kuandu International Animation -
kdiaf.animation.tnua.edu.tw Turkey
Taipei Film Festival - taipeiff.taipei Adana International Film Festival -
adanafilmfestivali.org.tr
Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival -
goldenhorse.org.tw Antakya International Film Festival -
antakyafilmfestivali.com
Taiwan International Children's Film
Festival - ticff.org.tw Environmental Short Film Festival -
environmentalshortfilmfestival.com
Taiwan International Documentary Film
Festival - tidf.org.tw Flying Broom International Women's Film
Festival - ucansupurge.org.tr
Taiwan International Ethnographic Film
Festival - tieff.org Hak-İş Short Film Festival -
hakiskisafilm.org
Taiwan International Queer - tiqff.com
International Changing Perspectives
Women Make Waves Int'l - wmw.org.tw Short Film Festival - icpsff.com
International Children's Rights Film
Tanzania Festival - icrff.org
Zanzibar International Film Festival - International Crime and Punishment Film
ziff.or.tz Festival - icapff.com
Istanbul International Architecture and
Thailand Urban Films Festival -
archfilmfest.org
9FilmFest - 9filmfest.com
Kisa-ca International Student Film
Festival - kisacafilmfestivali.com
Tonga
KisaKes (Cut It Short) Short Film Festival
Nuku'alofa Film Festival - - kisakes.org
nukualofafilmfestival.com
Malataya International Film Festival
(MIFF) - malatyafilmfest.org.tr
Trinidad & Tobago

WANT MORE SECRETS?
They’re waiting for you at:
filmfestivalsecrets.com
Including ebooks, podcasts, articles,

online courses, and more.
Also: the mind behind this book can help

you create a custom festival strategy!
Visit filmfestivalsecrets.com/consulting
for more info on tailor-made festival
strategy for your film.

Pink Life QueerFest - Belfast Film Festival -
pembehayatkuirfest.org belfastfilmfestival.org
Sustainable Living Film Festival - BFI Future Film Festival - facebook.com/
surdurulebiliryasamfilmfestivali.org bfifuturefilm
TRT Documentary Awards - trtdoc.com BFI London Film Festival -
whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff
Universal Kids Film Festival -
universalkidsfilmf.wixsite.com British Urban Film Festival -
britishurbanfilmfestival.co.uk
Ukraine Cambridge Film Festival -

cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk
Docudays UA International Human Rights
Documentary Film Festival - Carmarthen Bay Film Festival -
docudays.ua carmarthenbayfilmfestival.org
Cinema and You - kiti.org.ua Celluloid Screams -

celluloidscreams.co.uk
Kyiv IFF Molodist - molodist.com
Chichester International Film Festival -
Kyiv International Short Film Festival - chichestercinema.org
kisff.org
Cine-Excess - cine-excess.co.uk
Linoleum International Contemporary
Animation and Media Art Festival - CineCity Brighton Film Festival -
linoleumfest.com cine-city.co.uk
Lviv International Short Film Festival Wiz- Cornwall Film Festival -

Art - wiz-art.ua cornwallfilmfestival.com
Open Night Film Festival - Crystal Palace International Film Festival

opennight.org.ua - cpiff.co.uk
East End Film Festival -
eastendfilmfestival.com
United Arab Emirates
Dubai International Film Festival - Edinburgh International Film Festival -
dubaifilmfest.com edfilmfest.org.uk
World of Women Film Fair Middle East - Edinburgh Short Film Festival -
wowmiddleeast.com edinburghshortfilmfestival.com
Encounters Festival - encounters-
United Kingdom festival.org.uk
Aesthetica Short Film Festival - asff.co.uk FilmBath - filmbath.org.uk
Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival - Filmstock - filmstock.co.uk

africa-in-motion.org.uk Flatpack Festival - flatpackfestival.org.uk
Animex Awards - animex.tees.ac.uk Foyle Film Festival - foylefilmfestival.org

FrightFest - frightfest.co.uk Sci-Fi-London - sci-fi-london.com
Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest - Sheffield Doc/Fest - sheffdocfest.com
fringefilmfest.com
The Rai Film Festival - raifilm.org.uk
Glasglow Film Festival - glasgowfilm.org
Two Short Nights Film Festival -
Glasgow Short Film Festival - twoshortnights.com
glasgowfilm.org/glasgow-short-film-
UK Asian Film Festival -
festival
tonguesonfire.com
Grimmfest - grimmfest.com
UK Film Festival - ukfilmfestival.com
Iris Prize LGBT+ Film Festival -
UK Jewish Film Festival - ukjewishfilm.org
irisprize.org
Wimbledon International Short Film
Kinofilm Manchester International Short
Festival - wimbledonshorts.com
Film & Animation Festival -
kinofilm.org.uk
Leeds International Film Festival - Uruguay
leedsfilmcity.com Montevideo Fantastico - arte7.com.uy
Leeds Young Film Festival - Piriápolis Film -
leedsfilmcity.com piriapolisdepelicula.com.uy
LIDF - lidf.co.uk
Llanberis Adventure & Mountain Film Venezuela
Festival - llamff.co.uk Festival Internacional de Cine Video
Loch Ness Film Festival - Verde de Venezuela - festiverd.com
lochnessfilmfestival.co.uk Independent International Short Film
London Greek Film Festival - Festival - findecoin2017.wixsite.com/
londongreekfilmfestival.com findecoin
London Independent Film Festival -

liff.org Zambia
London Short Film Festival - Sotambe Documentary Film and Arts
shortfilms.org.uk Festival - sotambe.org
London Super Shorts Film Festival -
supershorts.org Zimbabwe
Norwich Film Festival - The International Images Film Festival for
norwichfilmfestival.co.uk Women - icapatrust.org
Oska Bright Film Festival - oskabright.org Zimbabwe International Film Festival -
Purbeck Film Festival - purbeckfilm.com zifft.org
Raindance Film Festival - raindance.org

About the Author
Christopher Holland's great-grandfather Elwood A. Geiges invented

the hand signals for American football referees. In what was surely a
crushing blow to his ancestor, Holland eschewed what could only
have been a stunning football career to work in the film industry for
more than twenty years. In the early days of the internet he was a
film critic at stomptokyo.com (lauded by the New York Times as “a
place to indulge one’s questionable taste”) before joining the staff of
the Austin Film Festival. (For a completely different reading
experience, check out Holland’s earlier book, Reel Shame: Bad Movies
and the Hollywood Stars Who Made Them, co-authored with Scott
Hamilton.)
In 2006 Holland joined film distributor B-Side Entertainment as the

Director of Festival Operations. While there he collaborated with
more than 200 film festivals like Sundance, SXSW, AFI Fest, and
SILVERDocs to bring indie films to audiences and to discover
emerging voices in cinema.
In 2008 Holland published "Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook for

Independent Filmmakers" and began working as a consultant on
marketing and festival strategy with artists around the world. After
serving on the staff of film festivals like the Austin Film Festival, the
Oxford Film Festival, and the Atlanta Film Festival, Christopher now
lives in Atlanta with his wife and daughters. He works as the Event
Operations Manager for the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, one of the
most prestigious events of its kind.
He believes that hot dogs are not sandwiches.

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Film

with a foreword by Jarod Neece

Copyright © 2019-2020 by Stomp Tokyo and Christopher Holland

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

Chapter 1 - Before You Submit 17

A book is perhaps not as collaborative an endeavor as making a

Many thanks to those who got me started in my transition from mere

To Roger Erik Tinch, for unwavering cheerleading, moral support,

To everyone who supported the initial Seed & Spark campaign to

10 Film Festival Secrets

To Christina Holland for her enduring patience and support, to Amy

10 years ago Chris Holland used his longtime knowledge of film

If I’ve learned anything in my almost 20 years working and

At SXSW alone we receive over 8000 film submissions each and

14 Film Festival Secrets

Knowing insider tips on when and how to submit to festivals,

Every year I field dozens of emails from filmmakers who want to

The underlying question of course, is: why do so many filmmakers

Impatience is usually the answer to such questions. We want so

Chapter 1: Before You Submit 19

- Private test screenings with objective feedback are a crucial

You’ll need a venue, projection & sound equipment, and an

20 Film Festival Secrets

Chapter 1: Before You Submit 21

Short Films: How Long is Too Long?

One of the most common questions asked by the makers of short

22 Film Festival Secrets

Festival screeners have seen hundreds upon hundreds of

This is necessarily an incomplete list, but after two or three

Someone is rudely awakened by an alarm or outside noise or

- Someone says ‘shut the fuck up.’

- People walk down a sidewalk with a backdrop of colorful graffiti.

- A scene in a convenience store switches to security camera footage.

Chapter 1: Before You Submit 23

- Someone points a gun at someone. Preferably while saying ‘shut the

- Someone takes a leak. Preferably outdoors. Points if urine stream

- Someone answers a phone only to be hung up on.

- Someone tosses a portable phone or cell phone in disgust at the call

- A profound quote is displayed on the screen.

- Someone takes a shower or brushes teeth. Preferably while

- Camera pans up into trees to denote passing of time or space.

- Camera pans down to shoes to denote passing of time or space.

- We realize it was all a dream.

- Someone goes to a party only to retreat outside in a funk while

- Someone tries on different outfits in front of a mirror while also

24 Film Festival Secrets

“As a film festival programmer and a former film festival director,

Often the tried-and-true has been re-tried ad nauseam, to lesser effect.

This might sound impossible, but new works show up at festivals

Chapter 1: Before You Submit 25

- “Traditional” Distribution: Though harder than ever to attain these

- Audience building: Whether you find a distribution company to

- Networking. Festivals provide an unparalleled opportunity to

- Exhibition. You didn’t make your film to hide it in a closet – you

26 Film Festival Secrets

FilmFreeway (FilmFreeway.com) - many a fi lmmaker’s fi rst stop on the

indieWIRE (indiewire.com) publishes articles of interest for those dealing

MovieMaker Magazine (moviemaker.com) regularly features lists of the

Filmmaker Magazine (filmmakermagazine.com) reviews festivals regularly