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FilmSkool — a free film school

How to get accepted at film festivals (full guide)

A long guide to festival submission built around how programming decisions get made — what a festival is looking for, how the tiers differ, and where a submission budget is best spent.

Standard Story Company · 21 min · Intermediate · BIZ · Film Business · 2021

What you take away

Festivals programme a lineup, not a ranked list of quality — which is why a good film is rejected for being the second one like it that year.

Watch it

Filed under

Made for almost nothing

Oscar winners for Best Picture

Books on the business

Kit for this lesson

Panasonic LUMIX S5 IIX — The S5 II with raw out and ProRes internal
Sony a7 IV — The all-round full-frame hybrid
Canon EOS R6 Mark II — The affordable full-frame RF hybrid
Nikon Z6 III — Partially stacked sensor, N-RAW internal
Fujifilm X-H2S — Stacked APS-C, F-Log2, open gate 6.2K
Rode Boompole Pro — Carbon fibre, internal cable

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