Navigating the film festival circuit is hard.
There are thousands of festivals out there: some are legitimate, some are not. We all know the lotto-ticket festivals (Cannes, Sundance, Telluride, etc.) but how do you sift through the other 99%?
Once you narrow it down to 100 or so target fests, how do you go about applying so that you don’t break the bank with submission fees? How do you determine which festivals are a priority for your film?
Once you know where you want to be, and your reasons for being there, who do you connect with to ensure your film gets a fair shake during the submission process? How do you frame your film to programmers and artistic directors to ensure it grabs their attention? And once you’re having serious talks with a few fests, how do you play the premiere game?
Other writers have written extensively about the festival circuit. Dan Mirvish is an OG on the subject. And of course Ted Hope, as he is prone to do, recently gathered a ton of useful links and insights in one place. There’s plenty of info about festivals out there. The challenge is sorting through it all and organizing it into something useful.
We need an easier way for filmmakers to plan and manage their fest runs.
I have created a “Definitive Film Festival Guide” which includes over 250 US and international film festivals, along with relevant data about each fest.
After testing several options, I concluded the data is best presented as an interactive excel spreadsheet. The festivals are organized by start date and color-coded to delineate quality. Accompanying the spreadsheet is a READ ME FIRST doc which provides instructions and tips for using the spreadsheet effectively.
I have used versions of this spreadsheet to plan and manage the festival runs for all of my films, and that is how I recommend you use it as well.
As of today, the Definitive Film Festival Guide is available for purchase (as a digital download) in the AMAUTEUR store. Did I mention we have a store now?
Read on and I’ll provide a few tips for planning and executing a festival strategy for your film. Additional tips are included in the READ ME FIRST doc.
If you’re still a bit daunted by everything, have no fear. Also available in the store is the “Definitive Film Festival Guide + 30-Minute Festival Consultation”. During this consultation, we will briefly discuss your film and release goals before diving into the spreadsheet and developing a festival strategy you can execute on your own with minimal stress.
All of the data in the spreadsheet (and the READ ME FIRST doc) is culled from publicly-available information and first-hand knowledge. There is nothing stopping you from doing your own research, combing through lists, reading reviews, talking with other filmmakers, and creating your own spreadsheet from scratch. That’s what I did! That’s what lots of folks do. The info is out there.
What I can tell you is it’s a ton of fucking work, and that energy can be better utilized elsewhere. I am confident the Definitive Film Festival Guide will save filmmakers time, money and countless headaches.
There are a few documentary-specific fests on the list, but the guide is primarily concerned with fests for fiction films. There are no short-specific or animation-specific fests on the list to my knowledge, and only a handful of genre fests. Obviously many of the fests on the list screen a bunch of different types of movies.
Because the list is focused on live-action feature-length fiction films, the deadlines listed on the spreadsheet are, unless otherwise noted, the deadlines for US fiction features. Fests often have different deadlines for different types of movies. Even if you’re using the spreadsheet, I highly recommend doing your own double-checking and confirming the deadlines and dates for your target fests.
Festival dates and deadlines change every year. The official dates for some 2026 festivals are still not live. In these cases, whenever possible, I use the 2025 dates and deadlines and mark it as not live yet. Similarly, for the fests that have already happened in 2026, I use their 2026 info to estimate 2027. Because all the festivals are hyperlinked to their submission pages, it is easy to check regularly on fests and confirm you are up-to-date regarding pertinent info.
One of the columns in the spreadsheet — perhaps the most useful — is “team members”. These are the folks at each fest who are good to know: founders, artistic directors, programmers, coordinators, et cetera. A huge and essential part of navigating fests is engaging and developing relationships with the people who will ensure your movie(s) get a fair shake during the submission process.
There is no personal or professional contact information included in the spreadsheet. Having said that, most of this info is available publicly and pretty easy to find. In the READ ME FIRST doc, I include some tips for tracking down email addresses, such as:
If you can determine one person’s organizational email address, you can use the email structure to guess the emails of everybody else in the same organization.
Let’s say you’re trying to get in touch with Adam Kritzer — festival director of the Made-Up Target Film Fest — but you can’t find his email anywhere. You are however, with a little bit of digging, able to track down the email address for the festival’s marketing person, Billy Graves. His email is bgraves@madeupfilm.org. From that, you can guess Adam’s email is probably akritzer@madeupfilm.org.
Even though I call this the Definitive Film Festival Guide, there is really no such thing. There are so many fests out there, and new ones of varying quality are popping up constantly. This list is by no means comprehensive. Doc and genre fests are barely mentioned, and short and animation fests aren’t mentioned at all. Perhaps those are guides for other days.
In the spreadsheet, I use a simple color-code system to assign each fest to one of four groups. The groups are:
US Fests (Worth Considering)
US Fests (Your Call)
International Fests (Worth Considering)
Internation Fests (Your Call)
To some extent, the value of a fest is totally subjective and in the eye of the beholder. I am positive this list does not include every awesome fest out there. If there is a fest I missed, please let me know and I’ll add it to future versions of the guide. Also, there may be a fest I marked as “worth considering” that you dislike or I may have marked your favorite fest as “your call”. I’m only one person, with limits to my knowledge and perspective. To combat this, I tried to keep the categorization as broad, simple and objective as possible, and I utilized a variety of resources, lists and methods in my research.
“Worth Considering” fests are festivals of known quality and/or integrity. They run the gamut from big fests everyone knows like Quinzaine des cinéastes and TIFF to do-not-miss smaller festivals like Tallahassee, Treefort and RiverRun. There are exciting new fests like Los Angeles Festival of Movies and New/Next in Baltimore alongside more established fests like SF Jewish and Karlovy Vary.
“Worth considering” means any festival I have either had a good experience with personally or about which I’ve heard good things from a trust-worthy source. The “worth considering” fests that don’t have a bunch of industry buzz and bullshit attached to them are usually the ones most interested to engage with and support emerging filmmakers (and are often the most fun and rewarding to attend). One of the best things you can do to figure out the vibe of a fest is to research what they programmed — and how they marketed it — last year.
The “your call” fests are real fests, but I have not interacted with them personally and have not collected enough info to vouch for their quality and/or integrity. I’m sure some of the fests marked “your call” are wonderful. The reality is, I don’t know, and I’d rather be overly cautious than overly optimistic.
Roughly 60% of the list is “worth considering” fests and 40% are “your call”.
Through the end of February, I am running a special promotion exclusively for the FILMSTACK community!
Use promo code FILMSTACK to receive 20% off the “Definitive Film Festival Guide + 30-Minute Festival Consultation”.
If you have any questions, feel free to DM me or drop ‘em in the comments below.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.