In 2022 we have been paying attention to an aspect of film distribution we have largely ignored for several years beforehand: film festivals.
We have had rejections of course. With many festivals receiving thousands of entries, there will always be rejections. But we have also found some success. Machination has picked up several awards at film festivals for Acting, Directing, and Sound Design. Cats of Malta has been selected for the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, New York Cat Festival, and other festivals we cannot reveal quite yet. Our latest Life Improvised film, The Dance, screened at Kinemastik International Short Film Festival in Malta last night.
But this handful of success has come at a cost of almost $1000 USD so far in festival submission fees. Could this money have been better spent elsewhere? Like running Facebook ads for the release of Machination? Have we gotten enough return for our funds? In short: are film festivals worth the cost and effort?
We are not the first filmmakers to ask this question. Just find a filmmaking forum or group, search for “festivals”, and there will be an onslaught of comments about the merit of film festivals or lack thereof.
The general consensus amongst filmmakers seems to be that most festivals are not worth your time, or the inflated entry fee. They won’t do anything for your film. That only a small handful (the big names like Sundance, Cannes, Berlin, Venice, etc.) can help get your film sold to a distributor and kickstart your career. And those handful of festivals are impossible to get into without connections with programmers or a sales agent already attached and prioritizing your project for consideration.
Cats of Malta screening as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival
Then there are a ton of festivals that are outright scams. FilmFreeway, the biggest festival submission platform, lists over 10,000 festivals around the world. How many simply take your money, never watch your film, or never even hold an event? Who even knows, but in 2017 filmmaker Chris Suchorsky wrote to a prominent (but unnamed) festival with screenshots of Vimeo analytics that proved the festival had only watched 21 minutes of his 97 minute feature before sending him a rejection letter. He got his money back. The vast majority of filmmakers never do.
Of course, we were aware of all this already. Since we finished our first feature Friends, Foes & Fireworks in 2017 our priority has been getting our films released to the public and beginning to recoup money as soon as possible rather than holding back films for a festival run. Sure, we would still enter a handful of festivals, but accepted or rejected, we didn’t place much importance on them. The festival game seemed broken and rigged to us, just another level of gatekeeping, and we didn’t want to play.
I like to think it wasn’t always like this. There was a time when festivals were true bastions of independent film, a home for groundbreakers, cultivating uncut gems, propelling the likes of Tarantino, Michael Moore, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater, and many more into fame. But I cannot say for sure. Perhaps the festival mantra of “all films are carefully considered” has been a myth from the very beginning? Perhaps it has always been an insiders club only for the Hollywood elite and those they choose to champion? All I know for sure is I am not in the club.
The celebrated Tribeca rarely programs films from the paid submissions pile.
But in 2016, an article written by Stephen Elliot, where he interviewed over 100 filmmakers and festival programmers, revealed that the vast majority of festivals in North America programmed under 20% of their films from paid submissions. Meaning most films were invited to the festival or received a fee waiver.
In fact, there were 17 festivals, including the celebrated Tribeca, that didn’t program a single film from a filmmaker who paid to submit. Yet all these festivals were still happy to accept submission fees from unsuspecting filmmakers dreaming of an official selection that literally had zero chance of happening. And these are statistics from 2016. Who seriously thinks, with more and more films made every year, that your odds of selection have improved?
One unknown festival programmer summed up what many filmmakers suspected and what the statistics proved. It’s not what you do, it’s who you know. “There’s an ecosystem. We’ll almost always know a producer or editor or actor, even if we don’t know the director.”
Chris O’Fait expanded on this in his IndieWire article Killing the Sundance Myth: No Filmmaker Comes Out of Nowhere, revealing:
“Of all the Sundance myths that developed over the last 35 years, the biggest fallacy is that of being magically discovered and launching one’s career on a snow-covered January evening in Park City.”
Covid takes its toll on festivals.
And yet thousands of filmmakers continue to submit to Sundance (14,000 submissions per year at last count) chasing this mythical dream. To paraphrase one filmmaker I read online: paying to submit to Sundance is like a tax on amateur filmmakers.
Then there was Covid, which forced many festivals online, removing the live screening aspect of festivals where you could witness an audience react to your film. In person networking was gone too. For us, these experiences were always the highlights when you did get selected, but for one or two years it couldn’t happen, making even more filmmakers question the value of film festivals.
But even before Covid, our thinking was it is better to release our films to the market and make money. We felt many filmmakers simply liked the ego trip of being selected for festivals and showing off on social media. We were more business-minded. This is our career, our own funds on the line, we needed to be paid in money, not dopamine hits coming through social media likes.
So what changed in 2022? Why did we decide to take festivals seriously again?
The answer is we decided to go slow with distributing Cats of Malta. We decided we wanted to work with partners and corporate sponsors to organise screenings, both live in the community and virtually. Plus we wanted to broadcast the documentary on PBS and for that we would need underwriters too.
And to help us achieve our goals, to help pitch the film to partners and sponsors, we wanted to build some acclaim for Cats of Malta. Festivals could serve as a perfect tool for this. Official selections, even awards if we are lucky, demonstrate that the film has merit.
Distribution consultant Jerome Courshon from Lion Heart Distribution describes it as building pedigree for a film.
“If a movie has built pedigree, it can influence distributors, and it can influence the public upon release. Why? How? It tells the audience (like a distributor) it has merit and is worth giving 90 minutes out of their life to it. Because it's good and/or entertaining. Or enlightening. Or something. But worth it.”
Festival selections, plus conventions, have given us multiple reasons to travel. Credit: @lenarenae/Instagram
And though we didn’t set out to influence distributors (at least not yet), getting selected into the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival attracted this unexpected result. A broadcaster from Israel approached us about licensing Cats of Malta. We closed the deal only last week.
We have also been selected for two festivals in the US in October. CatCon, the biggest cat related convention in the world, is also in October in the US. We were debating whether to attend the convention or not but getting selected into the festivals in the same month made the decision so much easier. We have multiple reasons to go.
So are film festivals worth it in 2022? I think they are, but it depends on the film. I’m betting our horror film Machination doesn’t really need festivals. Our erotic drama In Corpore certainly didn’t, and it sells just fine without any laurels.
But if you have a film that you want to build a pedigree for, then festivals can pay off. Have a targeted list that matches your film, try to hit that early submission deadline to save money, know which festivals you have no chance at, and be disciplined with the ones you do enter.
And when you are selected for something, if you can attend in person to network, and see you film on the big screen with an audience, it will always be a much better experience.
That’s a big one. I have met some of my closest friends and best collaborators at film festivals. Isn’t that alone worth the price of submission?
Written by Ivan Malekin.