Submitting to Film Festivals

To submit a film to festivals, pick festivals that fit your film, read each one's rules, and send a complete entry, usually through an online platform such as FilmFreeway, with a streamable screener of the full film. Incomplete entries, or entries that break a festival's rules, may never reach the programmers.

How to choose the right film festival

A filmmaker submits a film by finding the appropriate festival to showcase the project, then matching its category, fit, and entry system. Look at what a festival has programmed before, whether it has a section for your length and genre, and whether it screens work like yours. A festival's own rules are the authority, found on its website or its submission listing, and they differ: the Atlanta Film Festival, for example, accepts entries only through FilmFreeway and will not consider email submissions.

Check premiere status before you spend money. Many festivals want a world, national or regional premiere and treat earlier public screenings or online release as a problem. At Atlanta, features that have already been released online, on VOD or on disc are not eligible, a Georgia premiere is required for its feature competition, and shorts that are already online are judged case by case. Plan the order of your submissions so an early small festival does not cost you a bigger one.

What the submission package must include

The festival submission package must be complete. Before starting, at a minimum the filmmaker should have:

• A submitter who is a permanent member of the team, ideally the director or a producer, with an email address that is checked regularly
• A finished film, or a cut as close to final as possible where a festival accepts works in progress
• A streamable online screener of the full film, such as a private Vimeo or YouTube link or a file uploaded to the platform, since a clip or trailer alone cannot be judged
• English subtitles for any non-English film, and closed captions where the festival asks for them
• A short synopsis, credits, running time, still images and a press kit with a director's bio, for when the film is selected

Atlanta, for example, does not accept DVDs, Blu-rays or downloadable files, and marks an entry incomplete if subtitles, audio or image are missing.

How the platform side works

FilmFreeway provides a "Submit Now" process for each festival: you build a project page for your film once, click Submit Now on a festival's listing, choose a category, and pay the entry fee through a shopping-cart checkout. Just creating an account, or starting a submission, does not count as submitting. Many festivals set early, regular and late deadlines, and the fee usually rises as the deadline gets later, so entering early saves money.

Before paying, confirm on the festival's own listing the deadline, the category and runtime limits, the premiere rules, the fee and whether any waivers or discounts apply. Waivers exist but vary widely: at the time of writing, Atlanta offers full waivers only to its alumni and to filmmakers from countries under international sanctions. Fees and deadlines change every cycle, so check the festival's official page each time.

Rejection is normal, even for strong films, since programmers turn down far more work than they can show. Keep a spreadsheet of where you submitted, when decisions are due and what each festival asks of selected films. If you are accepted, answer quickly, deliver the screening file and publicity materials on time, and do not post the film online until your festival run is over.