Film Festivals Get Rejected, Too

This week, a small film festival that I co-founded called Doc10, is announcing its lineup. We don’t take submissions, which means that we’re thankfully not taking money from filmmakers, nor is FilmFreeway or anyone else profiting from the process. Because the festival is curated from a range of documentaries that we see at other film festivals or that I request directly, however, it means there’s a lot more direct interfacing between the filmmakers and the programmer (i.e. me). And since we only have about 10 slots (with a diversity of styles and subject matter), we don’t get to include a number of strong films that we might otherwise be able to program if there was a larger slate. And this means I personally tell a lot of filmmakers that their films weren’t selected. Or to put it more bluntly: that they were “rejected.”

Rejection. It’s an awful experience, certainly worse for the rejected, but not so great for the one who rejects, either; it’s an awful word, from the 15th Century Lati…