Film Festivals are crucial to advancing your career as a filmmaker. At least, that’s what film festival organizers will tell you.

Over the last 20 years, thousands of film festivals have sprouted up in every conceivable format, genre, location, and niche. This provides filmmakers incredible opportunities to get into film festivals, but has also created an opportunity for the nefarious to create festivals in bad faith.

However, what if I told you there was a successful way to navigate the film festival market while still keeping your head above water? I know, because I’ve done it.

So, here are 7 ways to get your project into film festivals, no matter what.

Option 1; Hire Someone Who Had A Successful Film At That Festival

First, we need to classify the film festivals available to us. At the top, we have our Gold medal festivals. These are all the names/brands you’re familiar with: Sundance, Cannes, Tribecca, SXSW, etc. If I can mention a festival name and you recognize it, they are a gold tier.

These are the most competitive film festivals in the world, and some would argue that the high number of submissions compared to the low number of films selected, makes them more competitive than Harvard or Yale. Generally these organizations are only looking for pre-validated projects, which means they know a person or production company already associated with the project.

But don’t fret, you don’t need A24 attached to your film to get in. Generally speaking, it pays to have an actor, producer, or major department head who’s working on your film, who has already had a project (preferably a major one) in the festival. That way, you can give your film a leg up through name recognition, calling out that experienced professional (and their prior project) in your film festival cover letter. Even better, you could ask that person in the interview process if they would be willing to call the film festival ahead of time, and give them a heads up that your film is coming, which leads us to…

Option 2; Have Someone Call In A Favor to A Festival Organizer

It’s preferred that your project has a department head or actor who has previously been in the festival, but it’s not required. Film festival organizers know a whole host of people, and you could ask friends or mutual connections to call in a favor. This will get your project to the top of the pile, and a fighting chance.

You could even make those connections yourself. Film festivals need volunteers to help screen works, especially regional film festivals (which we’ll get into in Option 4). If you live near a major film festival, it doesn’t hurt to reach out and volunteer at a film festival, especially if you know you’ll have a project you’ll want to submit two years in the future.

Let me be clear, making a preemptive heads up call, or hiring someone who had a film at Sundance will NOT guarantee your film gets into Sundance, or any other festival for that matter. However, it will give you a leg up over the competition.

Option 3; Hire A Celebrity

It’s a well-known fact that Hollywood likes celebrities, because distributors of all sizes want a name and face to put on the poster. However, most actors with name recognition wouldn’t do low budget projects.

Back in the old days of Hollywood (the 1990’s), knowledge was a carefully guarded commodity. You had to know what celebrities would be interested in smaller projects and under what circumstances, and that could only be found out from Hollywood power brokers, such as agents, managers, and well-connected producers. However, today you can just go to the Cameo actors page, https://www.cameo.com/browse/actors?sortBy=promo_price_desc and scroll through who might be willing to do low-cost work.

Now, to be clear, getting a celebrity actor in your film is not as cheap as a 20 second cameo video, but it does give you a good guideline for who would be willing to work for a single day on a low-budget production, and you get a diverse array of choices.

While film festivals say they love promoting bold filmmakers, the truth is they are a business, and they desire celebrities who can give clout to their festival, particularly celebrities who can show up to their red carpet events.

Now, let’s be honest, making a professional film (even a short one) is a big financial investment, and adding a celebrity to the mix also carries a big price tag. However, if you have the money, if you can afford a few thousand dollars for their fee, if they happen to be in the city you’re shooting in, and if you can hire a driver to bring them to and from set, then the stars might align in your favor, and be a huge draw for your film.

Option 4; Use The Data

Now, let’s talk about our Silver tier of film festivals, which are large festivals that are primarily regional. Some examples include Newport Beach film festival for southern California, Cinequest for Northern California, Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival for Alberta Canada, Telluride Film Festival for Colorado, Chicago International Film Festival, Calgary International Film Festival, or Nantucket Film Festival for New England. These regional film festivals are often hubs for creatives, have respectable sponsors and events, and legitimate judges reviewing submissions. Getting officially selected to a regional festival (or even an award), is a legitimate accomplishment for most filmmakers.

As part of my filmmaking process, I will make an Excel spreadsheet of all my speaking cast members and department heads. I will then look at every film they have previously done on their IMDB and go to the Release Dates page for each of these works. If a project has been released at a film festival, then those dates, and the name of the festival should show there.

Once I’ve gathered all the festivals for all the team members, I’ll sort the Film Festivals Name column, and see if the same festival name appears twice in the sheet. If you want to get fancy, you can run a Conditional Formatting highlight on the Festival Name column, saying to highlight if there are duplicate values.

You now have a list of the festivals that are more likely to accept your work, especially if two or more of your cast/department heads have appeared in it, or if one team member has appeared in it twice.

Again, this capitalizes on the pre-validation strategy, using data to guide where you can apply to for both silver and gold festivals, and opens up opportunities that you may have previously not considered.

Option 5; Apply Early

Timing is everything.

Applying early isn’t just a matter of getting your submission in before the deadline—it’s a strategy that can significantly improve your chances of being noticed. Many filmmakers wait until the final deadline, assuming that as long as their film gets in on time, they’re on equal footing with everyone else.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Early submissions often get a better shot, because the earlier you submit, the fresher the programmers are. They’re not swamped with hundreds of last-minute entries, and they have more mental energy to appreciate the nuances of your work. By the time late deadlines roll around, programmers may be buried in a sea of submissions, and while they’re professionals, they’re also human.

Also, early submissions show that you’re organized and serious. Film festivals love working with filmmakers who are prepared and professional, because they know an organized filmmaker will do part of their promotional job for them. Also, every festival programmer has had at least one bad director who turned in a brilliant work, but then their exhibition file was an absolute mess, and they’re not keen to repeat that.

Another good tip with this is, if you ever receive an email from a film festival, any kind of email at all, immediately reply with the phrase “Acknowledging Receipt.” It shows you’re on top of things, even if it takes you days to follow up on the request.

When you submit early, it demonstrates that you’ve got your act together and aren’t scrambling to meet deadlines. This kind of preparedness can leave a subtle but strong impression on the festival team—one that may give you an edge when it’s time to make final selections.

Plus, many festivals offer reduced entry fees for early birds. Not only does this save you money, but it also opens up more budget to submit to other festivals.

By submitting early, you avoid getting lost in the final rush.

Option 6; Apply To Everything Without An Application Fee

Finally, we have our bronze tier, and to be honest, calling some of these film festivals bronze is a compliment. Fortunately, once you leave the gold tier, a festival laurel (also known as Official Selection) from any festival is the same as any other festival.

If you run a search on FilmFreeway, the one stop shop for film festival applications, you’ll find thousands of film festivals on there, including many that are fly-by-night enterprises.

FilmFreeway is a legitimately impressive website, and the people who developed and run the site are doing incredible work. One of the advantages of FilmFreeway is the ability to search for festivals that have a $0 entry fee. In fact I have bookmarked searches for each of my short films targeting those with $0 entry fee, as well as the appropriate genre and runtime.

Now, there are several reasons why a film festival would have $0 entry fees, including that they are a nonprofit, focus on an underserved community, or they are a film festival for children. However, there are some nefarious festivals that have ulterior motives, essentially luring in filmmakers with a $0 entry fee, accepting all entries, and then having additional charges for those who wish to showcase at the festival. Those additional charges could come in the form of promotional fees, a commemorative program or T-shirt, required ticket purchases for 15 people, or the festival may require you to provide a Digital Cinema Package (DCP) file, and oh! What a coincidence! The festival just happens to have a DCP partner that they co-own.

Others have set up there film festivals as a way of collecting emails to sell and share with others, so I do recommend you create a junk email address for your applications, that you can easily monitor, but also easily discard. In fact, I set up a new application email every year for my festival and grant applications, because you can never be too careful with who you share your data with.

The strategy here is to basically apply to everything: quantity over quality.

However, many of our silver and gold festivals prefer (or require) a local or worldwide premier for their projects. So, if you use this strategy, choose to start employing it one year after you start submitting to film festivals, to give you some buffer.

Now, these festivals do not obligate you to pay for the additional services I previously mention, and once you get slapped with these charges or requests, you can always politely decline, or (if you feel the need) withdraw your film from the festival.

Option 7; Take The Laurels & Run

Now, you might be asking, “Wait a minute, I want to get my film into festivals. How does it benefit me to enter into a film festival, and then withdraw?”

Well, the whole point of film festivals, particularly at this tier, is to promote yourself, and remember, once you get officially selected to be in a festival, you can honestly and boldly proclaim that your film got into that festival, and claim your laurels.

Once that happens, you:

• Download the laurels from FilmFreeway
• Add the laurels to your short film thumbnail on YouTube
• Update your IMDB
• Update your Resume
• And move on to the next one

I have a whole section of my artist/filmmaker resume for festivals that I was officially selected to, and many of them have an asterisk, which my resume clearly states, “*Denotes unable to participate in festival due to logistical issues.”

At the end of the day, film festivals balance being opportunities for filmmakers, while also being functioning businesses. As a filmmaker, you want to provide as much as you can to film festivals in order to build long-term relationships, while also making sure you are getting something of value in return.

Do you have your own thoughts? Let us know in the comments!

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