Film Festival Success Stories

Film festivals are an important aspect for the screening, selling, and distributing of independent films. These festivals provide an opportunity to exhibit your work before an audience and participate in Q&A sessions where you can have a dialogue with the viewers and get valuable feedback on your film. Film festivals also offer the possibility of garnering awards, generating press, and potentially having the opportunity to distribute or sell your film.

Festivals also serve as a networking venue where you meet producers, actors, and talented crew as well as other directors. Many times, there are representatives from companies that provide services to filmmakers, such as film labs, equipment rental houses, and postproduction houses. All of these contacts could prove useful to you and your future productions.

A short film showcases your visual storytelling skills and can give agents, production companies, and financiers a sense of what they can expect from a feature film that you might direct. And a film festival is a great place to attract this type of attention. Many feature filmmakers first generated interest based on a short film that they screened at a film festival.

Oscar-nominated writer-director Wes Anderson screened his first film, Bottle Rocket, a thirteen-minute black-and-white film, at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. This short caught the eye of producers Polly Platt and James L. Brooks, who signed on to produce the feature film version of the story. Bottle Rocket, the feature, was released in 1996 and launched Anderson’s directing career, as well as the acting careers of Owen and Luke Wilson.

Andrea Arnold’s first short film, Milk (1998), screened at thirty film festivals internationally, including Semaine de la Critique (Critic’s Week) at the Cannes Film Festival.¹ Her second film, Dog (2001), was commissioned by BBC2 and screened as part of a television series in a program entitled Ways to Leave Your Lover (2003). Her third short, Wasp (2003), catapulted her career into feature film directing. This film won thirty-eight international awards, including the 2005 Oscar for Best Short Live Action Short Film.² By 2006, she was in production on her first feature, Red Road. She has since gone on to write and direct Fish Tank (2009) and Wuthering Heights (2011). Her most recent film, American Honey, was released in 2016.

Benh Zeitlin’s 2012 debut feature film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, won the top prizes at Sundance and Cannes before being nominated for four Academy awards.³ This feature film was financed by Cinereach,⁴ based on the success of Zeitlin’s 2008 short film, Glory at Sea, which won best short film at the New Orleans Film Festival and the Wholphin Award at the SXSW Film Festival.⁵

Film Festival Basics

Let’s talk basics. Film festival applications can be very expensive, especially for those located in the United States (typically $25 to $60 per submission). Many international festivals, however, don’t charge for the application.

2015 Sundance Director’s Lab participants shooting Eggplant

Photo by Brandon Cruz, Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Film festival acceptances are far from guaranteed. Festivals receive hundreds, if not thousands, of submissions every year, which creates an extremely competitive process. If you don’t form a good festival submission strategy, you can end up paying hundreds of dollars in application fees, without ever being invited to screen your film. Here are a few guidelines to help you to make the most of your film festival submissions.

After the Festival

If your film receives a press review, that becomes part of your press kit and advertises your skills. This is how you can attract agents and production companies. A press kit can be hardcopy items, but most often it’s electronic (digital). An electronic press kit (EPK) is something you can easily email or upload. The press kit will contain still images from the film as well as behind-the-scenes shots. There should also be a synopsis, a cast and crew list, a director’s statement with a headshot, a page that relates any interesting anecdotes that happened during production, and of course any press articles about the project.

Perhaps your short film was a smashing success at a major film festival, and now you have production companies asking what you’re working on next. It was hard enough just to get the short film made, but to move your career to the next level, it pays to be prepared with a feature project at some level of development—at the very least, a full treatment, but even better would be a compelling feature script.

Many filmmakers have based their first feature film on the characters and story of an earlier project. Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket and Benh Zeitlin’s Glory at Sea were both short films that served as the inspiration for their feature debuts. Filmmaker Dee Rees used this strategy as well. She wrote the feature film Pariah as a graduate student at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She used the first act of that screenplay for her graduate thesis film in 2007, and this short film screened at dozens of film festivals internationally. In 2008, Rees was accepted into the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and Directors Lab. In these development programs, she developed the feature project, which she then shot and released in 2011. Pariah went on to win over a dozen awards, including an Independent Spirit Award in 2012. In 2015, her TV movie Bessie, starring Queen Latifah, broadcast on HBO.

Development Programs

Development programs are an excellent means to build your specific project, your skills, and your career as a filmmaker. These programs can be competitive—but once you’re accepted, they can support you and your project in a variety of ways. This support takes the form of mentorship, instruction, funding, equipment, and access to production companies looking for new work to produce.

Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute created the first talent development program for independent filmmakers in 1981. The Sundance program includes the Screenwriters Lab and Directors Lab, which occur every January and June, respectively. The Screenwriters Lab is a workshop that, in their words, “gives independent screenwriters the opportunity to work intensively on their feature film scripts with the support of established writers in an environment that encourages innovation and creative risk-taking.”⁶

The Institute’s Directors Lab is for first-time feature filmmakers. Every June, directing Fellows are mentored by creative advisors as they workshop and shoot scenes from their feature film script with a professional cast and crew. Through this process, the filmmakers can hone elements of their script, develop creative partnerships, and prepare for production. Former attendees of the lab include notable filmmakers such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Kimberly Peirce, and Quentin Tarantino.

2015 Sundance Directors Lab participants shooting Little Woods

Photo by Brandon Cruz, Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Film Independent, based in Los Angeles, has established a comprehensive development program that includes Directing, Screenwriting, Producing, and Documentary labs. Film Independent fellows receive year-round support. Screenwriting labs take place over five weeks, with workshops scheduled two or three evenings per week. Directing labs include mini-productions of scenes from the script, with each fellow receiving equipment and a stipend. Producing fellows receive mentorship to organize their production and possibly a $30,000 stipend for production costs. Documentary labs are for filmmakers currently in the postproduction stage, and their lab consists of a series of meetings and workshops to provide feedback for the completion of their film, as well as its distribution and marketing.

Additional development programs in the United States that deserve mention are the San Francisco Film Society’s Filmmaker 360 program, which offers grants, mentorship, and residencies as a part of its support services. The Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access Program awards grant money, one-on-one mentorship meetings, panels, and workshops. The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) lab provides mentorship to first-time directors in the postproduction stage, where they focus on film completion and marketing and distribution strategies for the project.

Some international development programs are less established than those in the United States, but they provide exciting opportunities to garner additional support and international exposure for a film project. Berlinale Talents is a subsidiary program of the Berlin Film Festival. The program is open to applicants who have worked in a key crew position on a feature length film or on at least two short films. The Summit, the main meeting of Berlinale Talents, offers master classes and panel discussions over a period of six days. Recent visiting filmmakers include Darren Aronofsky, Walter Salles, and Wim Wenders.

The Berlinale Talents program also features Project Labs, “Studios,” and a Project Market. Directors participate in Project Labs that consist of the Doc Station, Script Station, and Short Film Station. In these labs, they work with mentors to improve their script, whether it’s for a documentary film, narrative feature, or short film. Cinematographers participate in the Camera Studio, where they engage in discussions and demonstrations with expert cinematographers, and there are also studios for editors, sound designers, and production designers. Producers have the opportunity to participate in the Talent Project Market, where they pitch their projects to co-producers and financiers.

Biennale College–Cinema is an offshoot of the Venice Biennale, which oversees the prestigious Biennale Art Exhibition and the Venice Film Festival, among several other programs. This program, according to the website, is the “higher education workshop for the development and production of micro-budget full-length feature films for emerging directors and producers from all over the world.”⁷ Applications open every two years for producer-director teams to submit projects that can be produced on a very small budget. Participants meet over several months to hone the project, and then three projects (out of twelve) are awarded production financing. Once the film is complete, it premieres at the Venice Film Festival.

Additional international development programs include Amsterdam’s Binger Film Lab, which provides directors and screenwriters with a month-long program to develop their feature projects through participation in workshops and master classes. And the newest program is the TorinoFilmLab Script & Pitch program. This program is for screenwriters and writer-directors in the early development stage of a narrative feature project. The program lasts nine months and includes two online sessions and three weeklong residential workshops held in Belgium, France, and Italy.

Screening your short films on the film festival circuit can introduce you to other filmmakers, festival programmers, and festival attendees. And having a feature film project in hand when you’re presenting your short will allow you to engage with producers and agents as you seek funding and representation. Not ready with your short or feature project yet? You can still get out there, see the work, and meet likeminded filmmakers. It’s a good goal for this year—hit the festivals, and get inspired!

KAREN DEE CARPENTER received her MFA in Film and Media Arts at Temple University and is an Assistant Professor of Film Production at California State University, Northridge. She has produced several short films for which she has received Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in both Filmmaking and Screenwriting. Her film, My Scarlet Letter, was awarded Best Film by five festivals, including the Hamptons International Film Festival, and has screened at festivals internationally, including Torino, Palm Beach, and Brooklyn International. Her subsequent film, Sarah + Dee, was honored with the prestigious Princess Grace Award and screened at several festivals, including Aspen Shortsfest, Newport Beach International, and Mill Valley Film Festival. Carpenter is currently developing her feature film screenplay, The Measure of She (and other aesthetics).

KAREN DEE CARPENTER

Photo by Johanna Coelho