Blog: Film festivals

ABYCINE – FESTIVAL Y MERCADO DE CINE INDEPENDIENTE DE ALBACETE tiene entre sus objetivos fundamentales la difusión y promoción de películas y cortometrajes de categoría artística que, por una u otra razón, no disfrutan de la distribución regular en los circuitos convencionales de exhibición.

El Festival trata de cubrir, en la medida de lo posible, este importante vacío, siendo otro de sus objetivos, y no de menor importancia, presentar una selección de películas participantes que atiendan las nuevas corrientes del cine joven contemporáneo, el fenómeno “indie” en el cine español y la educación de la mirada en las nuevas generaciones de espectadores.

Mobile Short Film Festival is a festival of short films created with the aim of promoting the audiovisual production of films in a non-professional and youth.

This festival is an initiative part of a final degree project and aims to reach young people through a new medium: the Internet. Moreover, it is a creative proposal with very specific premises that put technical possibilities of the participants on the same level.

We know that creating a short film is a job that takes time and a lot of dedication, but we want to know what you are able to do 72 hours, a mobile phone and a particular title. For this reason, the festival will only accept those productions that meet these three. To learn more about the requirements of the shorts, you can consult the general rules in our website.

Stop motion category is part of Catacumba Film Festival 2019. You can consult the regulations of FICCA't 2019 at www.catacumba.org.

By registering in this section, the short film will be automatically registered to participate in any section of the festival (if it meets the requirements of the rules of FICCA't 2019.

These can be consulted at www.catacumba.org). If this one is selected in the official section it will opt for all the prizes.

In the Hauts-Cantons de l'Hérault, the association Au Fil des Arts presents its international meeting of short films open to all the enthusiasts of images and cinema, self-taught, students or professionals ...

A dozen films in competition are submitted to the Jury for the "Jury Prize"
And the public vote for the "Prix du Public" of € 500 each.

IX edition of the Zinetxiki Zinemaldia - International Film Festival for Children and Youth, organised by the cultural association Begira Elkartea, will take place in Bilbao and other Basque cities and towns from 14 to 29 December 2024.

Zinetxiki Zinemaldia aims at offering worldwide quality audiovisual contents to a family audience. Through the projection of selected works in several competitive categories, the festival seeks to promote the audiovisual education and the creation of new audiences.

CATACUMBA UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL is a cultural, handcrafted and resistant project that since the year 2000 is developed in the Valencian municipality of Godella and that uses as a backbone the projection of recent audiovisual works that coexist during the celebration of this peculiar festival.
In its 17th edition, the festival aims to collect independent film proposals that offer an alternative perspective created from the transversality that filmic language allows. Works that in some way subvert morality, dismantle repressions, our philias and phobias and that evidence the structural defects of the society in which we live. On the margins of the entertainment industry we will find proposals that can lead us towards different models of expression that allow the narrative cinema to return to the expressive category that it seeks to invite reflection. Possibly if it is strange is because it remains hidden from perception and the senses.
We understand that the cinematographic production is living a creative process that enhances the fusion between genres, stoking the originality and the diversity of the medium, we ascribe to all these possibilities. From CATACUMBA we want to reflect this creative reality, giving space to a greater number of works, sometimes unclassifiable, but which act as reflecting mirrors of the strange reality that we live.
In short film and feature length format you will have the possibility to feel all the fears, dreams, philias and phobias that our directors intend to transmit. You will know genres once reviled and undervalued, but that have had transcendental titles in film history and that have become authentic referents of universal filmography. Reflecting cinema of our social reality, cinema that convinces us more every day that reality will always surpass fiction.

The NY Dog Film Festival premieres in NYC and then travels to many cities in the US and Canada annually. It is a collection of short films that celebrate the remarkable bond between dogs and their people. Animal shelters and rescue organizations receive a portion of proceeds in each city. Films must have a canine theme.

We welcome submissions of films of any length (preferably less than 30 minutes) whether narrative, animated or documentary, as long as they have a canine subject matter. It is fine with us if the film has already been seen in other film festivals or venues since the point of the Festival is for dog lovers to have a shared experience of taking in all the films as a community experience.

Since 1995, The Victoria Film Festival (VFF) has presented the best Canadian and international feature, documentary, and short film to Victoria and Vancouver Island in a ten-day celebration of cinema. This year marks our 30th festival! Eclectic and inspiring, the festival hosts a wide array of film directors, producers, distributors, and programmers as guests and participants. With a continuing legacy of great workshops, installations, filmmaker lounges, and the opening Gala, this year’s celebration of film and filmmakers is taking place in British Columbia’s capital city February 2rd -11th 2024!

Bucharest Film Awards is a space designed for film professionals and film enthousiasts to foster creativity, expressivity and innovation in the cinematic field. Our mission is to create a platform where both experienced and new filmmakers can share their art, enhance their work and connect to diverse audiences.

Hosted in Bucharest, an iconic city for the Eastern Europe, with an efervescent cultural life, our festival will promote the best films from the online among a public avid to descovering new forms of contemporary art.

The film screenings will be held in 3 of the most inspiring venues in Bucharest:
Qreator by IQOS, Carturesti Verona & Cinema Elvira Popescu, well known among locals and foreigners for creating a favorable athmosphere for exploring promising artistic initiatives.

This year we put the emphasis on Innovation, integrating new forms of expressivity adapted to the 21st century film world. So, beside the film screenings, we have arranged a VR Cinema, Chroma Live Wall for Live CGI, Augmented Reality Screenings, Live Streaming shorts exclusively screened on smartphone platforms and many more!

Come along with us!

Submit now for the 2021 Film Competition!

More details on: www.bucharest-films.com

Bucharest Film Awards promotes short and feature films from around the world with 18 awards in 3 categories. Only films accepted in our Official Selection are eligible to screenings.

All submitted films will be reviewed by a jury of film professionals, that will look for creativity, talent, powerful ideas, quality and attention to details, regardless of the experience of those involved in the creation process and the budget of the submitted works.



The Film Competition will be a 3-day event that will include thematic workshops, live screening events, industry talks and networking cocktails.


In addition to the Film Competition, we created Spotlight with the aim of better promoting the best submitted projects. We will screen the best 10 films submitted in the first 6 months of the year.

In today’s film climate it is hard to showcase short films. Many festivals focus on features and it seems like this art of shorts is dwindling to silly videos about kittens on the internet. Even though we love kittens (who doesn’t?) here at the Short. Sweet. Film Fest., we love short films more.

With eight festivals under our belt, our goal for our ninth annual film festival is to showcase films under 30 minutes to the growing art scene in the greater Cleveland area and highlight the works of student to veteran filmmakers across the country.

Students should submit to the short student film category to receive a significant discount off of the submission fee.

We are looking for the best short films locally, nationally, and internationally. So send them our way!

Our festival will take place in the Alex Theater at the Metropolitan at the 9 hotel in the heart of downtown Cleveland. Filmmakers and patrons can stay at the hotel at a discounted rate and enjoy food and beverages throughout the festival.

Festival Overview

The purpose of the West Texas Film Festival is to screen diverse films from both directors and producers that would not normally be featured in West Texas as well as regional media makers. We seek short films, documentaries, features, animation and student films as well as screenplays from all over the world that have the pioneer spirit of filmmaking. We are a registered nonprofit organization in the State of Texas.

History

The festival was started by a grant in 2016 from Odessa Arts. The Education Day brings in over 100 high school students in the Permian Basin for workshops on acting, screenwriting, directing and producing. This is the third year of the festival.

The 2018 WTXFF wil feature the following showcases:

Tales of Texas (Nov 15th)
Educational Day (Nov 21st)
WorldView (November 22nd)
Artpocalypse (November 23rd)

If you have films about Texas, zombies, the post-apocalypse or international films with English subtitles, please submit them.

Please do not contact us about fee waivers. We are a small, grant funded festival that relies on submission fees.

The Mix Brasil Festival is an annual cultural event with a focus on films related to sexuality in its various forms of expression.

In 2020, an estimated audience of 176k people attended the screenings, theatre and music performances, conferences, and debates promoted in the festival's 28th annual edition.

Mix Brasil is held in November at prestigious movie theaters across São Paulo and takes full advantage of the diversity of the city to host a variety of innovative events. After São Paulo, Mix Brasil tours abridged programs to other Brazilian cities.

The event is carried out by the Associação Cultural Mix Brasil, a non-profit organization that seeks to promote the freedom of expression of sexual diversity by looking at new and different ways that this is achieved.

** IMPORTANT – COVID-19 ALERT **

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Festival Mix Brasil 2021’s edition will take place online, on a secure platform, with a limited number of attendees in each screening. If the guidelines of the local public agencies allow this the Festival may also take place in movie theaters.
It is thus concluded that your submission at Festival Mix Brasil / Festhome means that you agree that, if selected, the film will also be shown online.

Founded in 2000, The Valley Film Festival (VFF) is a non-profit project of Community Partners ® and is the first and longest continually running film festival in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, headquartered in the NoHo Arts District.

Now in its 20th year, VFF supports local and international voices that advance storytelling, while furthering the education, production, and exhibition of film. In 2010, the City of Los Angeles recognized our cultural contributions with the city seal, and in 2018 the California State Senate stood with us #UnitedByFilm in our efforts to practice conscious programming to unite the international film community.

The Festival is supported by a dynamic community of companies, filmmakers, and moviegoers, that make it possible for VFF to offer year-round programming:

THE VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL
*In 2019, we expanded from a five-day showcase of film screenings to nine days of live music, book readings/signings, screenplay workshops, professional development panels, a distribution symposium, networking, daily happy hours and, of course, film screenings.

FOCUS ON: Series
*Educational panels in The Valley’s schools (Art Institute, Columbia College Hollywood, and New York Film Academy) that bring our network of industry experts together to share relevant, practical knowledge on navigating the industry

THE VALLEY FILM MARKET
*Previously under our Focus On: series, we’ve pulled out our film sales & distribution events to create THE VALLEY FILM MARKET. Our inaugural symposium included panels and a one-on-one matchmaking event between filmmakers & distributors.

VFF screens shorts, features, documentaries, animated films, experimental works, web series, music videos, and more. If you're unsure if your film fits our programming, please review our archives before submitting.

The Burguillos Short Film Festival's goal is the promotion and exhibition of short films shot in Andalusia or made by Andalusian artists. Also, the support of cinematography and culture in the town of Burguillos (Sevilla).

ONLY FOR ANDALUSIAN FILM-MAKERS // Solo para cineastas andaluces (España).

The fourteenth edition of the Student Film Festival FENACIES Uruguay opened its inscriptions on April 1st, and will remain open until June 10th. As every year, all the students from all over the world (from Primary to University) can register their short films totally free, which will be displayed in Montevideo from September 9th to 15th.

FENACIES is an organization founded in 2011 that started with the aim of creating a cinema festival specifically to youth, where competition would be fair and creativity and effort of these would be valued.

At first, the festival was avowed of cultural interest by the Ministry of Education and Culture, educational interest by the Primary Education Council, and tourist interest by the Ministry of Tourism and Sport. Furthermore, in 2015 UNESCO declared it of educational and cultural interest.

The main aim of the festival is to strengthen the audiovisual education between the youngest, and through the short films realization they can express their ideas so that then they can see reflected on the big screen.

During the week, the short films that are selected will be shown in a public and state cinema. On September 15th will be announced the winners in the closing ceremony.

The Georgia Documentary Film Festival is a theatrical screening event in Atlanta, Georgia. Our mission is to screen independently produced documentary films from around the world at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema every year. If your film is selected, you are expected to provide a high resolution download of your film so that we can make a single program on 1080p Blu-Ray DVD.

Promoted by:
Restiamo Umani con Vik – Venice
École Cinéma – Naples
Italian Center for Cultural exchange-VIK – Gaza
The Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival is an annual, traveling and multicultural festival on freedom, human rights and justice, with a special focus on the contemporary reality in Palestine.
Nazra is the look, the perception we have of others, but also of ourselves. Thus, the Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival also becomes a pedagogical and cultural journey.
Also in its second edition, the main goal of the Festival is to show the problems and the expectations daily experienced by the Palestinians who live under occupation and in the absence of freedom and respect for human rights.

The Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival also aims to be an opportunity, for authors with great artistic skills but lacking sufficient financial resources, to exp
After the success of the two edition, also this year the Nazra Palestine Short Film Festival aims at collecting the best of the artistic production of short films by Palestinian and non-Palestinian authors. The selection will be screened in the Italian and Palestinian cities hosting the Festival. In this way, messages of multiculturalism, peace and justice will be spread through the competing works.

La 1ª Edición del Festival de cine Cortejos convoca un concurso de cortometrajes de ámbito nacional, a celebrar el 1 de Julio de 2017 en la localidad de Villarrobledo (Albacete).

Only for Spanish filmmakers.

Call for Submission – APFF-3/Feb/19
Asia Peace Film Festival - 3rd Edition
Theme:
Localizing Global Goals: Story Begins at Home!
September 2019
Pakistan
Executing Agency: Asia Peace Film Festival
https://asiapeacefilmfestival.com
https://www.facebook.com/AsiaPeaceFilmFestival/
Background:
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or the Global Goals for Sustainable Development, are a collection of 17 global goals set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. The Global Goals are broad and interdependent, yet each has a separate list of targets to achieve. Achieving all 169 targets would signal accomplishing all 17 goals. The Goals cover ecological, social and economic development issues including poverty, hunger, health, education, global warming, gender equality, water, sanitation, energy, urbanization, environment and social justice. The background and explanation are available in the Resolution Adopted by The General Assembly available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld
Localizing Global Goals: Story Begins at Home
The Global Goals provide an indicative agenda for sustainable development that is required to stimulate a series of collective actions to address areas of critical importance for humanity and the habitat. The Global Goals are a large, holistic and long-term set of goals, difficult to distil into simple and compelling messages.
While these Goals are global, their achievement will critically depend on our interest, intention, ability and resources to turn the global social contract based on pressing development commitments into a tangible reality in our homes, communities, neighborhoods, cities, regions, countries and so on. Consequentially, our immediate localities are the primary sites of the compliance of our commitments towards a universal development agenda. Therefore, the story of global goals begins at home and connects to the extended contours of universality. It becomes everyone’s business, leaving no one behind.
Locating Creative Communications: Awareness, Relatability and Reach
APFF believes that contextualization of meta-data is as much important for effective communication as much as localization of global goals are important for any meaningful delivery of development dividends. Policy makers have argued that, “we will only deliver on the SDGs if people know about the goals, demand action, and hold their leaders to their promises.”
From the communication perspective, delivery of development outcomes would largely be determined by the level of awareness, relatability, reach and influence towards global goals. Therefore, creative communications should be aimed at increasing awareness, explaining relatability, enhancing outreach and influencing investments towards Global Goals at immediate locality and beyond. Global Goals are a universal agenda, requiring progress at home and abroad. Experts have suggested that, “our communication should lead to developing political will, involving people to act for themselves locally, and aiming for the goals to become a universal reference guide.”
APFF is seeking to engage creative community of Asian region including passionate storytellers, filmmakers, writers, directors, actors, artists, musicians, singers, social media champions, multi-media creators to develop a communication mix on Global Goals.
Why a Film Festival on Global Goals?
Experience has shown that “the exposure one can get through film and digital content, whether it’s at a film festival, a local cinema screening, through online distribution or educational channels, is magnified compared to many traditional ways we try to impact change.” Festival exposure and awards often bring press attention, which is considered the best amplifier of messages.
A number of studies suggest that “to inspire change, people need to ‘feel’ your story.” Data, research, statistics and trend indicators are important. Data supports and drives decisions every day in what we do. But as they say data alone typically doesn’t reach the part of our brains which can reach complex issues, intuit connections, engage lateral thinking, or move one to action: the emotional brain. ‘Story’ speaks to our emotional brain. Experts suggest: “We have to change the way we communicate. All action is emotional, and in order to get an emotional connection we need to understand what it is.”
APFF considers filmmaking and cinematography as an effective medium of communication to understand, inform, inspire and generate an individual and collective will to act for behavioral and perceptual transformations. Through a thematic cinema, a diverse and larger audiences can be engaged on issues related to SDGs making a complex message simpler, communicative and inspirational. With the extended outreach of digital content, filmmaking has become an effective tool of communication which can be used to strengthen rights-based social movements and development discourses infusing a culture of transformation in societies plagued with hierarchical structures, policies and instruments.
Against this backdrop, APFF dedicates its Third Edition to the Global Goals encouraging film makers to tell stories of their own soil – narrate local stories to the global audiences and bridge the communication gap. Tell others what story you feel for. Lens your own story! You have a space to inspire, now.
APFF is aimed to celebrate 3rd Edition by encouraging production and organizing public screening of the selected Asian short films, documentaries, animations and music videos narrating the stories of struggle and transformations on any of the seventeen Global Goals. However, a particular focus would be laid on subthemes related to: ecological, social and economic development issues including poverty, hunger, health, education, global warming, gender equality, water, sanitation, energy, urbanization, environment and social justice.
Reference Material:
• https://worldsbestnews.org/partners-projects/communicating-the-sustainable-development-goals-everyone/
• More than 700 filmmakers across the globe tackled these questions as part of this year’s Picture This Festival for the Planet, a short-film competition for emerging filmmakers hosted by Sony and the United Nations Foundation. These short films explore global goals like clean energy, access to education, and environmental sustainability through a variety of storytelling techniques, including comedy, animation, and documentary interviews. One submission even borrowed from the horror movie genre.
• https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/8-short-films-to-inspire-you-into-sdg-action/
• http://www.un.org/webcast/pdfs/160421pm-sdgs-com.pdf
• http://www.dentsu.com/csr/team_sdgs/pdf/sdgs_communication_guide.pdf
Key Components of APFF - 3rd Edition 2019:
I. Inaugural Session – High profile representation from multilateral, bilateral and governmental fora
II. Screening of selected Asian films (shorts, documentaries, animations, music videos) followed by discussions and Q&A
III. Panel Discussions – 17 parallel panel discussions on 17 Global Goals (moderating conversations between policy and communication communities)
IV. Inter-Governmental Policy Dialogue on Global Goals in Asia
V. Master Classes on A2Z of Filmmaking
VI. Art Exhibition on Global Goals
VII. Musical and Cultural Events
VIII. Networking Dinners
IX. Media Encounters
X. Grand Finale followed by Award Giving Ceremony