Blog: Film festivals

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Vivienne Westwood, King Crimson, Tendechi Trucks, Penelope Spheeris, Jason Mamoa, Rosario Dawson, Mel Brooks, Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, Guillermo Del Toro, Paton Oswalt, Nichola Meyer, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Banksy, Octavia Spencer, Liza Minelli, Marlee Matlin and that's just the 7th edition. Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is an indie festival providing support and encouragement and helping propel filmmakers onto Netflix, SBS, ABC through their own talents, hard work and determination!

The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is a popular and beloved institution. We have grown over the last 7 years to become an important and essential Australian film festival, showcasing the world's best and most innovative cutting-edge documentaries. If accepted, you are guaranteed to be part of an incredible, world class line up. The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is a forerunner event in July before Melbourne's premier event Melbourne International Film Festival which starts in August. Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is Australia's biggest indie doco fest - 150 + documentaries over 31 days. We are currently recruiting for local Melbourne, Australian, and International Feature Documentary, Short Documentary, Documentary Web Series, Video Essays, Documentary Photography, VR and Interactive Documentaries to compete in our Australian Documentary Awards held during our July 2022 festival.

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is a festival where you and your documentary are the star of our festival! Thousands of people attend each year online, in-cinema and outdoors.

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival has a community feeling about it and genuinely cares about the filmmakers and their documentaries with alumni helping out with judging and masterclasses.

We Support:
Australian, BLM, Indigenous, Women in Film, LGBTIQ, Diversity, Disabled Filmmakers, Equality, Refugees, Environmental Issues and Freedom of Speech.

We are against:
Asian Hate, Racism, Islamophobia, Antisemitism, Ageism, Sexism, Bullying, Fascism, xenophobia, Inequality and Discrimination.

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Has:

- Premiered over 700 + documentaries in Australia
- 4 x Best in the World Documentary Film Festival - Film Daily
- 1 x Best in the Southern Hemisphere Documentary Film Festival - GuideDoc
- In 2020 we created the Southern Hemisphere's biggest online documentary film festival with over 150 documentaries showcased
- Australia's first competitive documentary film festival to go online

In short, over the course of the past 7 years, Melbourne Documentary Film Festival has become established as a rare treasure in the crowded and increasingly homogenous festival scene, without remaining in the slipstream.

What We Are Looking For:
Ideally, we want to see your locally and internationally produced Feature, Short, VR documentaries, Video Essays and Documentary Web Series to showcase in our competition in Melbourne, Australia in 2022. All countries, all ages, all abilities, all genres of documentary are encouraged to apply and can be considered.

The Hottest Postcode:
Melbourne, Australia has consistently been voted one of the worlds happiest and most liveable cities. Our competition represents a great opportunity and reason to visit Australia. In 2019 we had 41 guests to our festival from overseas and across Australia. This was made possible through a combination of the festival paying for the filmmakers to attend, filmmakers paying for themselves to attend, consulates, embassies and film commissions paying for filmmakers to attend and people crowd funding to attend. The festival is a great networking opportunity.

The Toughest Competition:
Go head-to-head in Melbourne, Australia and test your mettle with the world’s best, and most prestigious documentary film schools and film festivals such as Tribecca, Sundance, Sydney Film Festival, TIFF, Venice Film Festival, American Documentary Film Festival, Raindance, Slamdance, Sheffield Doc Fest, Hot Docs, New Zealand International Film Festival, Traverse City Film Festival Doc NYC, SXSW, CPH:Dox, IDFA, and many more. You're in it to win it.

Make it Australian: The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is an encouraging and supportive platform for local filmmakers. We commit to playing at least 45% Australian content in our 2021 fest to support the local industry. Screen Australia, Film Victoria, Create NSW, Screen West, Screen QLD, Screen NT, Screen Tasmania, Documentary Australia Foundation, AIDC, and Goodpitch Australia productions are encouraged to apply. MDFF wants to have the very best Australian competition drawing from local industry and indie talent. SBS, NITV and ABC productions are also eligible to apply to compete, provided that the production submitted contains new material and is effectively a director’s cut.

The Coolest Cinemas:
Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is currently part of the Cinema Nova family of festivals including Transitions Film Festival, Melbourne Queer Festival, Monster Fest. Cinema Nova is one of Australia's best cinemas and is the southern hemispheres largest independent cinema with 16 screens in inner city Melbourne and one of the coolest cocktail bars around. Cinema Nova is the go-to-venue to premiere documentaries down under including exclusive Australian premieres like the Sparks Brothers, Billie Holiday VS USA. All feature, shorts, video essays and documentary web series in competition will be played in DCP on a 4k projector at 24 FPS in Dolby surround sound. The cinema's we will be utilizing for the competition will be 147 to 240 seat capacity. All Q&A's will be conducted by a Film Critics Circle of Australia or Australian Film Critics Association member. We even have curated cocktails at the cinema bar and unmissable parties and networking events.

The Best Festival:
MDFF premieres, screens and showcases more quality local Australian and International documentaries each year than any other documentary only film festival in Australia and gives more talented Indie Filmmakers a chance to compete and screen to a big, receptive audience in Melbourne, Australia. The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is consistently featured on SBS, ABC, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, Time Out, Concrete Playground, and Weekend Notes and had additional short documentaries featured in Federation Square.
The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival presents a unique opportunity and supportive platform to showcase YOUR documentary Down Under in one of the coolest and most liveable cities in the world - Melbourne, Australia. We are looking for exclusive World, Australian or Melbourne premieres. for feature documentaries to showcase in our competition. Let our 45 media partners, and publicist get behind and help promote YOU and YOUR project Down Under and get just the right momentum and exposure behind your project launch in Australia.

In Short:
The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival aims to feature the freshest and most innovative documentaries from around the world, from short docs right through to feature length, award winning films. The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival looks to promote the best quality independent and industry documentaries cinema has to offer.

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Showcases The Best Entries From the Best Festivals Going Head-To-Head in Melbourne Australia Like:
American Documentary Film Festival, Big Sky Film Festival, Cannes, CPH:DOX, Doxa, Full Frame, Hot Docs, IDA, IDFA, Slamdance, Sundance, SXSW, Sydney Film Festival, The New York Film Festival, RIDM, Harlem International Film Festival, DocAviv, ImagineNative, Shanghai International Film Festival, The Muslim Film Festival, TIFF, Tribecca, Venice, Hot Springs Doc Fest, Telluride Film Festival, Tokyo Docs, AFI Docs, Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Doc N Roll, and Cork International Film Festival.

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Showcases Top Submissions from Top Organisations:
ESPN, Time Magazine, HBO, The Atlantic, Story Hive, Loading Docs, Australian Cultural Fund, Environmental Victoria, Creative Victoria, Regional Arts Victoria, Australia Rise Fund, BFI, Kartequinn, National Geographic, Screen Australia, Film Victoria, Screen West, Screen Tasmania, Screen Ireland, Doc Society, CBC, BBC, NL Film Fonds, NFB, IDA, Documentary Australia Foundation, Wild Angle Tasmania, AIDC and NITV.

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Has Seen Massive Ongoing Success and Distribution For Filmmakers:
Netflix, Apple +, Amazon, Stan, SBS, ABC, NITV, Waterbear, The New York Times, The New Yorker, MTV Films, Foxtel, Redbull TV, National Geographic, iWonder, Docplay, The Guardian Documentary Channel, Films for Change, Rialto Channel.

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Has Been Featured In:
Channel 9, Channel 10, The Project, ABC, SBS, NITV, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Triple RRR, PBS, Time Out, Broadsheet, Concrete Playground, 3CR, Kiss FM, 60 Minutes, Film Daily, Weekend Notes, IF Magazine, Vimooz, The Australian, Movie Metropolis, Screen Hub, Arts Hub, The Daily Telegraph, Radio National, 3WBC, Plenty Valley FM, 2SER, Filmink, Flicks, and The Conversation.

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Has Showcased Project From Top Australian Talent:
Warwick Thornton, Jack Thompson, Bruce Beresford, Rachel Griffiths, Olivia Newton-John, Cate Blanchett, Tommy Emmanuel, Jack Charles, Kutcha Edwards, Tom Zubrycki & Pat Fiske.

Previous Masterclass Topics Include:
History of New Zealand documentary a personal journey with Costa Botes, Asian documentary with Nick Torrens, VOD and distributions with Beama Films, crowdfunding for documentary with Pozible, Self-Distribution with Fanforce, Making the Great Australian Music Documentary, Making a Personal Documentary, Making LGBTIQ and Aboriginal Documentaries, Experimental Documentary, Documentary Filmmakers and Mental Health, Mobile Phone Filmmaking for Documentary Filmmaking.

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Has Had Submissions Involving Some of the World's Top Directors & Big Stars Like:
Peter Medak, Werner Herzog, Oliver Stone, Leonardo Di Caprio, Bruce Beresford, Richard Linklater, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Lawrence Kasdan, James Cameron, Errol Morris, Barbara Kopple, Anjelica Huston, Susan Sarandon, Sharon Stone, Cynthia Nixon and Joan Baez.

Melbourne Documentary Film Festival Showcases The Best Music Docos from Men at Work, Tommy Emmanuel, Placebo, Grace Jones, The Sonics, Agnostic Front, George Michael, Van Duran, Terry Pendergrass, Ronnie Wood, the Velvet Underground, Strange Tenants, Head Like a Hole, The Swans, The Beatles, Jonny Greenwood and Beverley Glenn-Copeland.

Melbourne, Australia Most Anticipated Festival
https://www.timeout.com/melbourne/film/upcoming-film-festivals-in-melbourne

The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival team looks forward to bringing you a diverse, challenging slate of documentaries that will entertain, educate and inform you. So let’s make some Melbourne film history together!

Bare Bones was created to champion the small budget filmmaker who wears many hats to bring their project to completion By Any Means Necessary. BAMN! 'No Frills-No Waste' is our common battle cry.

If you are a fiercely independent filmmaker producing small budget films or a screenwriter that can craft a script that can be shot on a small (less than a million dollar) budget, this festival is for you.

We are a festival run by Filmmakers, Professors of Film and Film Fans for Filmmakers, Film Students and Film Fans at all levels of expertise. This is a festival where recognition is generous and you are the Star no matter what role you played or how many roles you assumed, everyone is treated like a Rock Star. We roll out the red carpet for your premiere, allow time for Q & A following the screening, or the block of films if you are in the shorts category. We hold live readings of your screenplay with professional actors with you directing.

If you have special skills, you may be invited to moderate a panel or participate as a panelist. Festival Alumni also serve as Awards Presenters during the Bonehead Awards Gala.

The "Segni nuovi" Film Culture Club, in collaboration with the "Alcamo Doc" Film Culture Club, organizes the fifteenth edition of" Cortiamo ", international short film competition.

SECTIONS
The "Cortiamo 2020" festival is divided into the following special sections:
- Animation
- Shorts and Rights - "ernestodilorenzo" Publishing House Award
- Cortissimi (maximum duration 3 minutes)
- Documentaries - "Alcamo Doc" Award
- Under 25 - ACEC Award
- Gender equality
- Schools - "Aldo Filippi" Award
- Videoclip
It is good to clarify that the participants in the "Video clip" section must expressly declare that they are authorized to participate in the competition by the copyright holders of the song.

Each short film will be able to participate in more than one section and all the short films submitted will automatically participate in the selection for the "best film" and "New signs" prize.
Only those selected for the "best film" will also compete for the "public prize".

Chinese Korean Share Your Dream Short Film Festival, co-presented by CJ Group China and The Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, as a competitive film festival, will find talented filmmakers from China and Korea with the aim to contribute to the development of Chinese film industry through exchange and collaboration with the Korean film industry, ultimately, to build up the foundation for Asia to emerge as the center of the global film industry.

IOFF 2015is an online international film festival at its first edition. The festival’s main purpose is to create a context where films can compete with each other and receive the vote of the people, with no need of live screening.

13th Kolkata Shorts International Film Festival-24 is an amalgamation of unleash cinematic creativity & madness of cine-goers of beautiful city of Kolkata. The Kolkata city is the hub of Bengali Cinema, a culturally rich & destination of many budding filmmakers since past century. The festival objective is to give momentum to the short cinema & to foster the growth of new breed of filmmakers.

The humble journey of KSIFF has began in year 2012 to mark the 100 years celebration of Indian cinema & to salute the contribution of the Bengali film industry towards the development of cinema in India. The 2012 to 2023 editions of festival were huge success with participation from all over India & foreign nations and are the trendsetter festival in India & now in huge demand among young filmmakers.

The festival provide platform to aspiring and professional filmmakers for showcasing their talent with networking & marketing opportunities in film industry. The festival also hosts master classes & short film market. The festival objective is to create short films culture, promotion of upcoming filmmakers, developing sources of revenue generation for short films and to make short film making a commercial enterprise.

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.

National Horror Short Film Festival

ONLY FOR MEXICAN FILMMAKERS // SOLO PARA CINEASTAS MEXICANOS

The European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation (the Federation) is a tightly knit network of 22 film festivals from 14 countries, with a global attendance of over 450 000 visitors, making it a vital economic and cultural player on the fantastic film scene.

The Georgia Latino Film Festival is a 501(c)3 non-profit under the direction of Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association Inc. (LISTA). Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association Inc. (LISTA) is a certified 501(c)(3) non-profit providing institutions, organizations, events and corporations with technology and cultural enrichment services. These services include presentations, workshops, lectures, film festivals and more.

The Georgia Latino Film Festival operate in Atlanta Ga and Norcross Ga. Located just minutes from Stone Mountain. Norcross is a small town known for it’s arts centers, restaurants and easy access to area attractions, trails, restaurants, shopping and scenic byways.

The Georgia Film and TV Office, a component of the Georgia’s Department of Economic Development, the Atlanta Mayor's office on Film and Entertainment and the Georgia Production Partnership are annual supporters of the event and is sponsor of the festival and it’s activities.

Festival objectives:
The purpose of this non-profit organization is to conduct an annual film festival in the state of Georgia that features Latino produced films among other national and international entries.

Mission

The mission of the Georgia Latino Film Festival is to build awareness of independent films and film as an art form; provide educational opportunities for students and Georgia Latino filmmakers; and create opportunities for the Georgia communities to experience high-quality Latino films.

Vision

To make sure that our stories are being told in Hollywood and around the world and that our community has a place in Georgia where Latino film executives directors and artists at the forefront of the Latino Film and animation industry can come together to discuss the future of our industry and create a vehicle to develop the next generation of Georgia Latino film-makers.

POST MORTEM at its 12th . 2023 edition
is an international film festival based in Aguascalientes Mexico, every year we receive hundreds of film from all around the world, this year we will focus especially on short film as we believe that it is the explorer and creator of the new cinema paths that someday we will contemplate.

The 26th Kinoarte Film Festival, to be held from November 14th to December 1st, is receiving applications for its competitive sessions of short films. Films up to 25 minutes long, produced from January 2023 may participate in the Ibero-American, National, Paranaense and Londrinense competitions.

Tricky Women is the first and only festival of animated film that is dedicated exclusively to animation by women filmmakers. Since 2001 it has been held in Vienna each March.

The festival offers an international competition of animated short films finished after January 1st, 2014 and realised by female artists (male co-directors are welcome). We want to open the festival to trans*inter* filmmakers and would be delighted to receive your entries. Each filmmaker, producer or distributor may submit as many films as they like. Each film submitted must be accompanied by an entry form and sent on a separate DVD. No films entered in prior Tricky Women Festivals shall be admitted.

The deadline for applications for the preliminary selection is October 10th, 2015.

Moreover, we welcome shorts entitled “work” (working conditions in the digital era, work-life-balance, desired workplaces, ...) and Animated Feature Films for our non-competitive sections; these films can also have been produced earlier than 2014.

The entry can be up-loaded via www.festhome.com

Traditionally, Queens World includes a well-attended multi-day annual film festival, year-round screening opportunities for QWFF alumni, special events to bring the Indie film community together and an educational initiative for youth and seniors. Just like everyone else, we are keeping it fluid and responding to the needs of the Indie Film community.

The 10th Annual Fest was scheduled to March 19 - 29, 2020 at the Museum of Moving Image and the Zukor Theater at Kaufman-Astoria Studios. When we were closed on March 16, we changed course and opened on time - online - with 191 films from 32 nations which garnered over 30,000 views.

After the festival Queens World poduced Wednesday Nights @9, 19 live weekly broadcasts that identified individuals and organizations as our 'Hero of the Week'. In their honor, we curated a block of films by filmmakers working in similar themes which ran from Sunday to Sunday on Vimeo. On Wednesday nights we gathered the Heroes and the Filmmakers of the Week to discuss their work. We ran for 19 weeks and gathered over 19,000 views.

In preparation for Q11, we are working with our venues and our partners to maximize all available resources for the festival. We will use our signature thematic programming, grouping films together to create specific cinematic experiences and each screening event will be accompanied by Filmmaker Q&As. Our plans for June 2021 include both a virtual and a live event with some very exciting global elements that we will share with you at a later date.

While this is a tough time on our planet, now is not the time to stop communicating, to stop looking for what will heal us, or to stop gathering. Queens World remains focused on ideas, stories with heart, films with a point of view and artists who challenge..

This year we are concentrating on HOPE as our theme.
H - Healing
O - Opportunities
P - Promote
E – Equity

We are interested in films that examine, explore, defy, contradict and support our theme. The very act of making and completing a film is hopeful.

Show us what you believe in.
Bring your craft and let's see what you got.
Bring it.

Zinegoak is organized by Zinegoak Association and will take place in the city of Bilbao, Spain, June 2025.

All films which have an approach to sexual and gender diversity and LGTBQ+ families, which have been produced after January 1st, 2023 and never had been broadcasted or commercially released in Basque Country.

OBJECTIVES: This non-competitive event aims to be a meeting place for independent film production and the public, we encourage the creation and production of audiovisual filmmakers from all over the world and provide a space to allow diffusion of contemporary and cultural film productions.

THEME: Works will be accepted whose aesthetic and thematic proposal refer to the cultural identity of the places of origin of the filmmakers, providing entertainment and cultural knowledge for the audience.

Film Front moves frontiers: open call for motion graphics exhibition

Film Front, international short film festival, due to be held from 25th to 28th October in the cultural centre of Novi Sad, has decided to include motion graphics exhibition in this year’s festival’s program. Artists can submit their animations, presentations, animated GIFs, animated elements and other pieces that belong to the category of motion graphics.

Even though motion graphics are rather a fine arts category, they are tightly connected to the moving images art. That is why Film Fronts wants to honour these artworks that more than often do not find their way to the film festivals, but whose aesthetic value overcomes their usually determined functional purpose.

Any and all Horror Features and Shorts! There also is NO completion date requirement, so send all films from any year.

Comedy short films and musdic videos that contain comedic material.

Purpose of San Antonio Laughs Comedy Film Festival is to celebrate the power and artistry of comedy in film.

To provide a chance to see works from the world's best emerging comedy filmmakers as well as classic comedy films - and maybe even kick start the careers of deserving local and international stars of the-day-after-tomorrow

To provide programs that encourage appreciation, understanding and enjoyment of the comedy film

To provide a forum for comedy filmmaking including professional development and an industry marketplace.

The 30 Dies Festival is a tiny festival located in a tiny country between France and Spain which focuses on the fantastic film genre. On 2014 we had our first edition with 14 films screened during November in two venues. Our festival covers any film with fantastic elements within the genre of thriller / horror / action / creature / documentary / sci fi - films. At this year’s edition we have two categories: Feature Films and Short films (Under 20 minutes).

The 30 Dies Festival loves indie films and, for this reason, we accept films recorded in every format and with any kind of budget, but be sure that your film fits into our festival.