Before you even submit to a film festivals, it’s important you have a film festival strategy. After all, applying to film festivals can get expensive. So developing a film festival strategy can help you maximize your time, money, and filmmaking goals.

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The first step is figuring out what your goals with your film are. Are you hoping to sell your film and get distribution? Are you a newbie looking to connect with other filmmakers? Are you looking for future investors? Or are you just looking to collect some awards? Figuring out your filmmaking goal will help you better decide on which film festival strategy to use.

So there’s basically two main film festival strategies to choose from. You can either attempt to collect awards, or you can prioritize networking opportunities. Both are totally valid, but result in different filmmaking goals.

For example, if you're a relatively new filmmaker and you’re just trying to establish yourself on the scene, then collecting awards might be the right fit for you. This allows you to say you’re an award winning filmmaker and will give you more street cred the next time you make a film.

You’d be surprised how excited people get about your short film winning awards, even if they are from small film festivals. This is usually the best path for short films, because short films rarely get distribution deals and thus you’re less likely to rub elbows with industry bigwigs.

If collecting awards is your goal, then you’ll want to submit to niche or small film festivals, as this will thin out the competition quite a bit. For example, my film festival strategy with my short film Zombie Debt was to collect awards and this method worked fantastically. The film is a horror comedy micro short, meaning it’s under 5 minutes.

So I sought out comedy and horror film festivals that specifically had a micro short category. By doing this, my film only had to compete with other micro short horror or comedy films instead of having to compete with every short film of any genre or length. This meant the competition was low and thus my film ended up collecting 6 awards as well as 7 other award nominations.

However, if your goals are to network, get distribution, or find investors you’ll want to submit to mid to large sized film festivals where you’ll have access to more networking opportunities. These size festivals usually have filmmaker panels, lounges, and most importantly parties. And who doesn’t like parties right?! (party blower) But parties are more than a chance to get some free food.

They’re actually one of your best chances to rub elbows with other filmmakers and industry bigwigs, so make sure you bring those business cards and have your film pitches polished!

Now I did say there are two main film festival strategies, but the secret third one is a combination of both. By submitting to a few mid to large sized film festivals and then submitting to several smaller film festivals you’ll increase your chances of being accepted while also possibly getting into bigger network opportunities. Again this all depends on your personal filmmaking goals and what the right fit is for them and your film.

And one more tip here. If you have a film of extremely high quality that maybe even has some name actors in it, you might want to even attempt to qualify for an Academy Award. If that’s the case, you want to look for Academy Qualifying film festivals and luckily FilmFreeway makes that easy by placing an “Academy Award Qualifying” badge on these film festivals.

Now pro tip here. I really wouldn’t recommend applying to these film festivals unless you’re 100% sure your film is the best of the best, and I mean like more than just you, your best friend, and your mom think so. These film festivals are going to be the most competitive to get into and the submission fees are going to be high, so save your money and apply elsewhere.

Now that you know these tips for developing a film festival strategy, you’ll be able to be more savvy with your film festivals submissions.

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