Blog: Film festivals

Film submissions are limited to 15-30 minutes in length. Songs submitted music to be submitted as an MP3 file, and if video, an MP4.

Films Inspiring Hope: The focus of the film should have a storyline in which the characters face a challenge, and find their way to become hopeful and overcome the incident. Character development is especially desirable in this film, and in some manner, the central charter offers the viewer inspiration.

Films of Encouragement: The underlying message of the film is meant to offer encouragement, uplift the viewer, and leave them feeling an increased sense of motivation.

Films Focused on Global Healing: There is a great disparity between countries and the availability of resources to address issues of health and wellness. Films in this category may provide insight to identify problematic areas, and remedies to address these concerns, and to support universal acceptance and love.

Women's Issues: Women are not only a resource of nurturance, but accomplish remarkable achievements either individually, as a part of a family, or within their community. Maintaining life-Balance is frequently a struggle because of the multiplicity of demands placed on women. Social position and status can look different within the context of various cultures. Films in this category are meant to explore female empowerment and bring insight and increased understanding of the roles women place within their culture.

Men’s Issues: The role of men in cultures throughout the world has been undergoing changes. This can lead to confusion and feelings of insecurity. Modern men may stay at home and care for the children, or they may continue to function in traditional roles. Film submissions about men’s issues are encouraged to address the ways in which men come to understand their emotions, become comfortable with the expression of emotion, and how they connect in significant relationships.

Spirituality: Religious practice is not necessarily the same as spiritual practice; however, both or either can play an important role in our health and well-being. Films that focus on spiritual development, our relationship to ourselves and others within this realm, and how we contribute to the world through spiritual practice would be of interest in this film category.

Social Issues, Resilience & Sustainability: In every culture, there are issues of social injustice, conflict, and social differences, which can affect human or animal existence and the ability to maintain resilience. It is frequently not enough to be resilient because multiple losses can occur, we must instead focus on our ability to sustain resilience. Films that speak to how we might address social concerns that involve the depletion of social, emotional, environmental, or financial resources are welcome in this category.

Best Instrumental Score: Music scores may be from any genre, and the music should evoke visual imagery, and heightened imagination.

Best Original Song: All genres are accepted and will be evaluated based on the quality of performance and production.

Music Video: All genres are accepted and will be evaluated based on the quality of production in sound and visual imagery.

Original Holiday Songs: Submit Chanukah, Christmas, or any Holiday song in any genre that inspires hope, encouragement, or global healing through instrumental or vocal music.

Holiday Short Films: Submit Chanukah, Christmas, or any Holiday short films that inspire hope, encouragement, or global healing through instrumental or vocal music.

Holiday Music Videos: Submit Chanukah, Christmas, or any Holiday music video in any genre that inspires hope, encouragement, or global healing through instrumental or vocal music.

Christian Music Video or Original Songs: Profess faith and send a message of hope, encouragement, and global healing through cinema or music.

PG-13 Music Video or Short Films: On occasion, filmmakers, videographers, or songwriters will include language that is not suitable for children but is in the script to emphasize a concept or lyric. This special category has been created so that these submissions don't have to be excluded. Notification of the PG-13 label will be announced at film festival events so that individuals sensitive to language, or who have children or adolescents with them can determine how to make an intelligent decision about viewing.

Special Interest and Historical Topic Short Films or Music Videos: Historical and current events can be cinema-worthy. Please submit films or music videos, that document life events that inspire hope, encouragement, or global healing.

Special Interest and Historical Topic Original Songs: Historical and current events can be music-worthy. Please submit original songs, that document life events that inspire hope, encouragement, or global healing.

Children's Short Films, Music Videos, or Original Songs: In an effort to communicate the importance of inspiring hope, spreading encouragement, and supporting global healing; Round The Globe features cinema and music specially made for a younger audience to view, listen to, and enjoy and they learn about the importance of health and wellness.

We are the U.S. west coast premier destination festival for films such as fest favorites like Damsel starring Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska, to world premiere new discoveries like Netflix favorite Abducted in Plain Sight and many more.

We are dedicated to discovering and supporting the next generation of filmmakers. There’s a reason MovieMaker magazine has named Mammoth Lakes Film Festival as one of the “Top 50 Film Festival’s Worth Your Entry Fee” for the last nine years in a row: We put our filmmakers first!

We focus on bringing top-level press and industry professionals to the festival to get maximum exposure for our filmmakers. Past attendees included Variety, Hollywood Reporter, The LA Times, A24, Greenwich Entertainment, MovieMaker Magazine, and more.

The 11th annual Mammoth Lakes Film Festival will screen features and shorts for five days in the spectacular setting of Mammoth Lakes—California’s premier mountain resort, high in the Eastern Sierra. It will take place on Wednesday through Sunday, May. 21-25, 2025.

MLFF captures the imagination of audiences and contributes to the vitality of film culture by providing emerging filmmakers with an opportunity to show their latest work in a vibrant and nurturing atmosphere. Visitors are drawn to the area to experience exciting new films by both new and established independent artists, and for the opportunity to mingle with them at fun and friendly daily events. The festival is also a forum for filmmakers to have their work seen by industry professionals who have the potential to provide mentorship and propel their careers.

We are committed to promoting film as an art form by focusing on personal, innovative, imaginative films by writers and directors with a unique style and point of view. We present these films in the beautiful natural setting of Mammoth Lakes—a perfect backdrop for an independent film festival and a premier tourist destination in its own right. Because we are a destination resort, just a 4 to 5-hour drive or a quick flight from Los Angeles, we have strong allies within the entertainment industry. Our jury members are acclaimed artists and professionals from the world of independent film. We give out multiple awards in the categories of Narrative Features, Documentary Features, and Short Films. In 2024 we awarded cash and prizes valued at more than $40,000.00. We also provide travel stipends, housing, and festival passes for our filmmakers. Our juries have included Andrew Lazar (Producer of AMERICAN SNIPER), Allison Amon (Producer of THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES), Rachel Winter (Academy Award winning producer DALLAS BUYERS CLUB),and John Feidler (Producer of SERIAL MOM and PECKER). 2024 sponsors included Panavision, Light Iron, Town of Mammoth Lakes, among many others.

The Mammoth Lakes Film Festival, a DBA 501(c)3, is committed to showcasing the talent and imagination of emerging filmmakers and nurturing their efforts to follow their dreams.

We are celebrating the tenth edition of the Ciutadà Compromés Film Festival, organized by ACICOM.

Faithful to the initial project, we want to bring Valencian audiovisual productions closer to the public, which is why we project on multiple screens counting on the synergies of social entities and organizations. We will have civic and social, institutional and commercial rooms.

We value, with their exhibition, Valencian audiovisual productions, those that bring us a committed look. Our environment, social, territorial, economic, human rights, relationships, etc. is treated in these works. Some audiovisuals with a restless look.

We are a festival away from the red carpet, and more identified with the people and organizations we care about and work to improve society.

The II INTERNATIONAL QUECHUA FILM FESTIVAL “CINEAYLLU” 2024, the only one of its kind in the country and in South America, dedicated entirely to disseminating Peruvian cinema in the mother language Quechua, also opening the cinema to and from school students and the general public .
Festival organized by the CINE AYLLU Cultural Association.

GENERAL OBJECTIVES

. Create a cinematographic space with cultural identity.

. Increase sensitivity to culture with identity, reducing racism and discrimination.

. Conduct film workshops, Quechua Cinema conferences with experienced Directors and Producers.

. Carry out traveling screenings of community cinema in the Quechua Speaking communities of Arequipa and Velille – Chumbivilcas – Cusco, for children, adolescents and adults from the native communities.

The Festival will take place in Alicante from December 10 to 14, 2024.

Short film productions may participate exclusively with Smartphones.

The festival has a free theme.

Only for Spanish and Argentinian Filmmakers.

Focused since three decades ago on the discovery of new talents and the diversity of contemporary cinema, Granada Film Fest has a special interest in upcoming filmmakers of all nationalities, open to films decided to explore new audiovisual forms regardless of their definition, genre, format or duration.

The purpose of the festival refers to awareness of both the external filters on the screen, including censorship (commercial, ideological, aesthetic), and the internal filters of screen perception and projection, including self-censorship. NEFILTRAVANAE KINO is an exploration of aestheticization and commodification in art. The next aim of the festival is to expose the complexity, manysidedness, and variety of filmmaking.

NEFILTRAVANAE KINO is a film festival that is held by the Short Movie Club, the platform for cinematic projects. NEFILTRAVANAE KINO is ADAMI Media Prize qualified festival. The International Film Studies Conference is held at the same time as the film festival. In this way, film theory and practice are integrated together at the NEFILTRAVANAE KINO.

Originally the festival was held in Belarus, but because of political repression and publicly stated anti-war stance, screenings and events can be held in different countries. First of all in Lithuania (Vilnius). For example, the 10th Nefiltravanae Kino took place in Berlin, Vilnius and Helsinki last year. There were selected 63 films for 12 film programmes. https://shortmovie.club/programmes/10-2024/

The concept of the NEFILTRAVANAE KINO (Unfiltered Cinema):

ALIENATION PROBLEM

We live in a world of malls and cinema multiplexes. We see that indie cinema and non-commodity art go to the periphery of public attention. Primitive attractions replace the cinematography. The escape audience is alienated behind the big screen. So modern mainstream cinema is part of a manipulating tool that leads to the society of alienation. Thus the tendency is that indie cinema becomes more unreadable for the wide audience. We should understand the context of the filmmaker to understand the independent cinema. That is why the NEFILTRAVANAE KINO concept implies the physical presence of filmmakers.

FILM SELECTION PROBLEM
Filmmakers shoot millions of movies. And thousands of short film festivals organize screenings all over the world every year. On average, several thousand films are submitted to a film festival. So various good films can be neglected for whatever reason. Often selecting probability is like winning a lottery. As a result, filmmakers are left with no feedback. It is a paradox that no one can hear you in the age of the Internet! The mainstream culture prefers attractions and casual viewing.

Also, this idea is based on the film selection problem. Perhaps it’s no surprise one person, i.e. programme director at best, or even students of film schools make a preliminary decision to select a movie. Сoncordance of judges or previewers is more seldom thing than the difference of background, tastes. So selection or judging can be one-sided or perfunctory. It is not bad as the programme director has a good taste and aesthetic sensitivity, of course. But we’ve discovered another conception of “unfiltered cinema”. We matched it against “the best of the best” way. This way aids to perceive cinematic idiom without the dictate of art-curators.

CELEBRATION OF INDIE CINEMA
So the Unfiltered Cinema Film Festival tries to avoid “the best of the best” way but it does not ignore it completely, sure. The festival selects fiction, animation, documentary, experimental and virtual reality sections. A jury awards the best film in every section. The festival holds the screenings at cinema theatres, the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, and art-spaces.

Our aim is to gather people in art, to have a dialogue to be happy with smart communication. Cinema is art but not sport. The key point of our project is to establish communication between the filmmaker and the audience.

Please, read about the festival history through the link to the festival's website. http://shortmovie.club/history/

The Short Movie Club provides constructing of CinemaVan ( see https://www.behance.net/gallery/33392769/Cinema-van-Mobile-library-Amphibia ).

It is a Festival with two sections to contest. Official Section and Section of Asturian Short Films. Three prizes will be awarded (best short official section, best performance and best short Asturian). All the information is in the bases. Any author of any nationality can participate.

SHORT FILMS COMPETITION

The Dystopia, film and environment festival of the Murcia region is a project that aims to disseminate, serve as a reference and raise awareness about environmental cinema, as well as support and disseminate both national and international productions on this subject.

O OUFF en Curto busca estimular o formato da curtametraxe no ámbito da Comunidade Autónoma galega como expresión básica da creación audiovisual. É a sección de curtametraxes do Festival de Cine Internacional de Ourense.

The 14th Year will include new additions and competitions! The International Horror Hotel Film Festival and Convention is held every June in Northeast Ohio. We have open competitions for films and scripts in the following genres: experimental (film only), fantasy, horror, horror-comedy, slasher, sci-fi and suspense-thriller. We also accept trailers, music videos, TV pilots (film or script), and web episodes (film or script) for projects in the listed genres.

Competition is also open for our horror film scoring competition (submissions through our website). At the event, we have live scream king/scream queen and FX makeup competitions as well.

This year we will also be holding the second annual Room 237 Film Competition where film makers will compete to create a film in 30 days making use of a murder weapon assigned during a zoom kick off meeting. Further information about the Room 237 Film Competition will be available on the Horror Hotel Film Festival Web Site by January 2024. Start building your team and get ready to compete!

The event features four days of film screenings, two days of panel discussions and lectures, a convention starting on Friday afternoon, special guests, networking Karaoke parties, live competitions and more.


***PLEASE READ ALL RULES/TERMS BEFORE SUBMITTING***

THE FIRST FILM & SHOW-BUSINESS FESTIVAL IN ITALY ENTIRELY DEDICATED TO COMEDY!

In the heart of the Italian summer, amid the charm of Puglia, and the warmth of Manduria, The Comedy Film Fest – Manduria stands out as a high-profile cinema and entertainment festival. Over three days, the festival features film previews and hilarious live shows, all centered around the theme of great Italian and international comedy, accompanied by music and entertainment.

The event calendar is divided into various areas within the Municipality of Manduria, from the beach to the countryside, from daytime entertainment activities to wine tasting in the land of "Primitivo's wine". The main event takes place in the historic centre of the City of Manduria, where a large open-air arena of 2000 seats plays the most central role.

The fusion of cinema and music is of paramount importance. With this foundation, the festival offers a program of significant musical events seamlessly integrated into the overall schedule, enriching the experience for the audience.

The conceptual line of reference for the Astronomy Film Exhibition is human fascination with the cosmos, together with the observation and exploration of it, in search of answers to the questions it elicits, something which, far from influencing the cinematographic genre, can be reflected in the aesthetic of the film, its poetry, the topic, the plot, or by having been the source of inspiration itself for the work.

The BELLAVISTA FILM FESTIVAL (BVFF) seeks to inspire, empower, and unify our audience through cinematographic art of social impact.

The festival is a space in which the community and cinema converse through cinematographic works of art selected with great artistic value and a theme of representative and relevant social impact. Thus promoting social impact cinema as a tool to stimulate critical thinking and motivate social action to catalyze agents of change in their communities and beyond.

As a development of a social project for cultural growth, the festival seeks to promote exhibition spaces for the curated works, in addition to movie theaters, cinematheques and cultural institutions, also in neighborhood and rural locations and on an itinerant basis in representative cultural spaces in the rest of the country and Latin America.

We trust in the power of cinema as a commitment to social transformation and high-quality cultural reflection.

The Santiago International Documentary Film Festival (FIDOCS) is the main broadcasting, diffusion, and competition event for documentary cinema in Chile and Latin America.
Focused on the promotion of dialogue and reflection, as well as in training audiences towards the appreciation of documentary film in a context of permanent transformation, FIDOCS seeks to explore the multiple paths available in documentary making as well as in the drifts proper to nonfiction works. In its program, FIDOCS incorporates the works of both experienced and emerging directors in order to address the question of “THE REAL”, and in doing so, it considers the various dimensions, disciplinary frontiers, and tensions that the question “what is real?”, as well as the documentary genre itself, has to offer us.

Throughout its history, FIDOCS has positioned itself as one of the most distinguished documentary film festivals in Latin America, standing as a privileged platform to screen contemporary cinema and to promote critical thinking. Year by year, under its selective curatorial approach, FIDOCS not only calls for important exponents of national and international audiovisual sectors to exhibit their work in Santiago, but also, in using this city as a film hub, it calls on such exponents to question, interpret, and re-write the status of contemporary documentary film practice today.

For the promotion, positioning, and exhibition of Chilean and International films, FIDOCS displays three main competitions. These sections include: INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION; CHILEAN COMPETITION, and EMERGENT SHORT COMPETITION FOR NATIONAL FILMS.

In addition, FIDOCS has the main industry activity, DOCS IN PROGRESS, for Latin-American works in progress where the jury (editors, directors, sound designers, producers, programmers), in addition to choosing a winner, feeds the filmmakers to carry out the post-production of their films and encourage their diffusion and transmission. This section is jointly run together with WIP section of CHILEDOC CONECTA.

The festival also has important training and extension activities in its FIDOCS SCHOOL, where students from film schools and communications from all over Chile so that its most outstanding students are in an intergenerational and interdisciplinary space with international and national festival guests; attending Master Classes, workshops, dialogues, among others.

In addition, in keeping with its interdisciplinary vocation, FIDOCS intends to accompany its screenings of other artistic interventions such as installations, exhibitions, performances, that from their own expressive means dialogue with the documentary concept. This is how FIDOCS EXPANDED section arises, where various artists, video-artists and filmmakers, all of them linked to the fields of sound or visuals, exhibit their work.
Finally, the chosen films will be screened after the completion of the festival, in different regions of Chile and abroad, at BEST OF FIDOCS section. The purpose is the cultural extension of the festival at a territorial level, putting emphasis on the circulation of the films at the regional level, being able to program replicas in the national territory as well as abroad.

*FIDOCS will be held with theatrical screenings.

International Competition, International Panorama, Argentine Competition and Argentine panorama of short films made in Super 8mm format.

The Xilitla International Film Fest aims to promote nationally and internationally the cinema of the fantastic genre.

The most surreal site in Mexico proudly presents the second edition of its International Film Festival of Xilitla, also known as Xilitla Film Fest.

Located in the magical town of the Sierra Madre Occidental, with its lush tropical forest, this place captivated Edward James, who built his surrealistic garden here, a monument to boundless imagination.

In 2024, this festival dedicated to the fantastic genre—fantasy, horror, magical realism, science fiction, experimental, and its derivatives—will be held once again.

The festival is organized by the James Center, James Brewery, and the Edward James Museum, with the support of the Arts Center S.LP, the Municipality of Xilitla, and the State Tourism Secretariat of San Luis Potosí; in partnership with the Ibero-American Festival Network. As part of the festival, there will be competition screenings, showcases, tributes, professional training workshops, and holistic activities.

The call for submissions will be open from May 15th to September 30th, 2024.
The festival will take place from November 27th to December 1st, 2024, and will feature two sections: showcase and competition, as well as workshops, lectures, and tributes aimed at fostering the film industry.

CreaSport is a short films contest that have to do with the beauty of sport activities, their stories, their moments of glory or failure, their educational wealth… highlighting the capacity of penetration of physical activity in society.

The Rani Durgavati International Film Festival is designed to celebrate Cinema.

RDIFF is committed to Showcase films from amazing filmmakers across the globe. The festival welcomes films from around the world.

RDIFF is a Jabalpur, India based international film festival with screenings and Q&A and a twice-yearly awards event. One event is totally dedicated to Short Films and other event is for Full Length Films.

Our First Edition SUCCESSFULLY launched on 5th October 2023 for Short Films.
in June 2024 our Full Length Films Edition was a success.
Now we are heading towards our 3rd edition.
There will be two events every year.

Our main focus is to celebrate Cinema of Independent Filmmakers. We have a separate section for Indie Makers with less entry fee.

Note for Independent Filmmakers
As there are many films which did not get a release and makers did not get a good platform to showcase their cinema. RDIFF will provide them an online platform where they can schedule it and show it to the world. RDIFF will promote those films in the market (for that RDIFF will connect with the independent filmmakers separately, for query email us with Subject: RDIFF Play)

All projects officially selected will receive the official laurel and the custom certificate of achievement according to their final status in the competition through email.

The competition is open for professionals as well as students with separate section for student filmmakers.

Since we our guided by valour of Braveheart Queen Rani Durgavati, we will have a special category for Women Independent Filmmakers.

RDIFF is a festival with difference.