A few weeks ago, I was reviewing the new list of festivals recently published by MovieMaker magazine: The 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World. This list complements the 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee, published in April.
This new list focuses on the most fun and coolest festivals to visit, which is certainly a compelling reason to consider them. One of the main advantages of distributing your film through the festival circuit is the opportunity for networking, meeting industry professionals, and connecting with other filmmakers.
If you are in the middle of the distribution process or starting to plan your festival strategy, do not miss this list, along with others published annually by MovieMaker. In my work, I usually use them to complement the Oscars and Goyas lists, as you can always discover new worthwhile festivals. The comments from the experts consulted are also very interesting.
I have noted the 25 festivals, which you can review in the publication. Among them, Sitges appears as the only Spanish festival, along with others like True/False, which has one of the most suggestive programs on the circuit:
- American Black Film Festival // Miami, FL // June 2017 //
- Ashland Independent Film Festival // Ashland, OR // April 6-10, 2017
- Borscht Film Festival // Miami, FL // Feb. 23-26 2017 //
- Camerimage // Bydgoszcz, Poland // Nov. 12-19, 2016 //
- Deauville American Film Festival // Deauville, France // Sept. 2-11, 2016 //
- DOC NYC // New York, NY // Nov. 10-17, 2016 //
- Fantastic Fest // Austin, TX // Sept. 22-29, 2015 //
- Guanajuato International Film Festival // San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato City, Mexico // July 2017 //
- Havana Film Festival // Havana, Cuba // Dec. 8-18, 2016 //
- Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival // Lisbon and Estoril, Portugal // Nov. 4-13, 2016 //
- Lumière Film Festival // Lyon, France // Oct. 8-16, 2016 //
- Migrating Forms // Brooklyn, NY // March 2017 //
- Montclair Film Festival // Montclair, NJ // Apr. 28 – May 7, 2017 //
- Nordisk Panorama // Malmö, Sweden // Sept. 16-21, 2016 //
- Palm Springs International Shortfest // Palm Springs, CA // Jan. 2-16, 2017 //
- San Francisco International Film Festival // San Francisco, CA // April – May 2017 //
- Santa Barbara International Film Festival // Santa Barbara, CA // Feb. 1-11, 2017 //
- Sarasota Film Festival // Sarasota, FL // April 2017 //
- Seattle International Film Festival // Seattle, WA // May 18 – June 11 2017 //
- Sitges Film Festival // Sitges, Spain // Oct. 7-16, 2016 //
- Sonoma International Film Festival // Sonoma, CA // Mar. 29 – Apr. 2, 2017 //
- Sound Unseen // Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN // Nov. 10-13, 2016 //
- Telluride Film Festival // Telluride, CO // Sept. 2-5, 2016 //
- True/False // Columbia, MO // March 2-5, 2017 //
- Zerkalo Film Festival // Ivanovo, Russia // June 2017 //
In addition to MovieMaker, I am receiving more and more requests from festivals (especially from the United States) to leave reviews on the FilmFreeway platform. This is a new feature that allows festivals to be rated by filmmakers who have participated in or visited them.
The platform’s goal is to create a list of the 100 best-rated festivals by users.
This is an example of a review on FilmFreeway:
This new tool is in line with MovieMaker, although the results are currently very different. While professionals provide the opinions in the magazine, here it is the filmmakers themselves. I believe we are seeing a new trend of generating festival listings based on subjective and experiential criteria rather than objective and formal ones.
We will see how it develops and how it can help us plan the festival circuit.