Planning for the Festival Run

You’ve made your masterpiece. Now it’s time to release it to the world and show your baby to your unmet peers and a critical audience. Your mind immediately rushes to the mountain of Park City, Utah, where you rub elbows with the elites of independent film. Or you carefully emerge from your limousine and make your triumphant march down the red carpet at Cannes, lightbulbs flashing as eager fans fight to get a glimpse of the newest member of the A-listers on the festival circuit. Exciting as this may be to imagine, the first step is to set your priorities.

Let’s get something straight from the start. Yes, first-time filmmakers do get into Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, Berlin and Cannes. And yes, first time gamblers can also win the lottery. It can happen, but the fact is, of the over 14,200 entries for Sundance in 2019, only 112 feature films were accepted, and only 73 shorts were accepted. By the way, Sundance is not even considered to be in the top three of most prestigious international film festivals. That honor goes to Berlinale, Cannes and Venice. Should you try for these festivals? If you believe in your work, absolutely! Should you bet your fortune on getting in? Definitely not.

The reality is that with over 8200 film festivals listed on FilmFreeway, there is a very good chance that your film will be accepted to at least a few of them if you have created a quality product with the resources you had available. The trick is determining which festival is the right fit for your film, and hope that the programmers agree with you. But be honest with yourself… have you made the best film you can and is it ready to be shared with an audience? Let’s assume the answer is “Yes”, but you know what they say about the word, “ASSUME”…

Before you start hitting that submit button and forking over money that was more than likely not in your original budget when you planned out your production, you need to consider why you want to enter the festival circuit, and what you hope to get out of it. Let’s look at three scenarios:

1. You want to impress your friends, family and old high school classmates on Facebook and Instagram and prove that going to film school was well worth your parent’s hard-earned money.
2. You want to get honest feedback from critics and other filmmakers so you can learn from your mistakes and see what others are doing that will inspire you to hone your craft for the next project.
3. You want to get recognition as a filmmaker of merit and earn the respect of your peers with the hope of earning the confidence of Producers who want to fund your next blockbuster.

If your motivation is to show your old sweetheart that she made a mistake in dumping you for the tax attorney, two kids and a dog, then there are plenty of festivals that will gladly take your entry fee, allow you to post their laurels on your page and movie poster, and pray that your film is not as bad as they suspect it is because they didn’t even take the time to watch it to the end. And, yes, you may even win an award which they will gladly send you for a low, low price of $200. Yes, these festivals do exist.

Perhaps the best motivation to enter a festival is to get honest feedback from filmmaking peers and an unbiased audience so you can get a real gauge on how your storytelling skills really are and measure your film’s ability to connect with people you’ve never met. If this is your motivation, you will definitely want to look for festivals that have live screenings that you will attend if accepted. You will not only be able to get a feel for the audience’s reaction, but you will also have opportunities to meet other filmmakers, get their feedback, and perhaps find opportunities to collaborate. There are countless examples of filmmakers meeting at a festival as strangers and establishing relationships that have lasted their entire careers.

If you want to get recognition as a filmmaker of merit and earn the respect of your peers with the hope of earning the confidence of executive producers who will invest in you, you’ll need to take the time to find the right festival that is respected in the industry and be sure your film is ready to stand among the best. It does not have to be an Academy Award or BAFTA Qualifying Festival, but it should be one that has been around for a least five years, has live screenings with an audience, and has an objective set of judges. It should also have a website that shows you which films won in the past so you can see if your film at least ranks with those from prior festivals, and should not have an encyclopedia of awards that may include something like “Best Short Period Piece Film Made By a Baldheaded Person Born on a Wednesday who Lives with his Stepmother”. You get the picture; find a festival that you would be proud to say you participated in so you don’t have to apologize for putting your name and credibility next to their laurel.

At the end of the day, plan for success. Expect that you will be successful getting accepted to some of the festivals you’ve entered and be prepared to aggressively promote your film and make the most of the experience. Have a plan to market the screening, cover the cost of attending the event, and be prepared to present your best case scenario for your project just in case you meet that distributor who wants to sign the rights to your film.