Blog: Film festivals

Combining a traditional student film festival with a powerful online platform built for video-driven social impact campaigns, UPTOGOOD Impact Film Festival asks students to produce and share short films that can catalyze positive social change by highlighting social issues and solutions in their communities—and to use our film festival to amplify that impact.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:

The growing need to champion GOOD has never been more apparent. In the face of this, we, especially storytellers, are not powerless. Stories are powerful. Stories plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into an audience. Telling the story of a real person, for example, can humanize an abstract issue, or a far-distant conflict and convert it into something relatable. Science proves the brain synchronizes with the subject of a well-told story. Stories move people in a way that facts and figures alone never will. Film works to enhance this power of storytelling by touching our hearts over our rational minds.

As you look across your world and your immediate community, are there stories that matter to you? Can you shed light through a story that could inspire people to take interest, care and take action towards positive change?

We challenge you to tell these stories in your own way to, first and foremost, make your viewers feel. Whether it’s a strong sense of compassion, empathy, inspiration, outrage, awe, or all of the above, many of us have experienced that moment where you wished you could do something after watching a powerful film.

We then challenge you to take this a step further to harness that very moment. Come up with specific actions, big or small, so your viewers can be a part of that change you envision and mobilize for you as they watch. We are looking for short films that have the potential to go viral. Films that you just can’t help but share to have more people be informed and engaged. There is a magic quality to this type of content. You know it when you see it. Will you be able to capture this magic in your film and harness it? Storytelling combined with social actions can lead to impact. We are ultimately looking for short films and campaigns that have the potential to exemplify this power of storytelling to create more GOOD in our world.