No-Fee Film Festivals

These festivals have recently issued calls for entry that indicated one or more of their categories were open to submissions without a fee. You'll have to check out each festival's web site to see what their free categories are but it's a good initial list to consider if you're looking to submit your film on the cheap. 

Before you go, be sure to check out the Film Festival Secrets Vault, a compilation of my own best tips & tricks from the last decade of observing the film festival circuit.

If you're reading this page, you probably already know how expensive it can be to submit your film to festivals. It's also likely that you've found a lot of festivals with free submissions that aren't really right for your film.

So the question is: how do you maximize your submissions budget and your chances at being selected? This tip sheet gives you 10 handy starting points for crafting a festival plan for your film, including:

  • The aspects of festival strategy you should consider during production
  • How to find submissions bargains
  • What festival directors really want and what persuades them to consider a film without a fee

Ready to learn more? Visit the Film Festival Secrets blog for film festival submissions and marketing tips, news, and more

 
The Better Film Festival Submissions Toolkit has a very simple purpose: to help you improve the way you submit your work to film festivals.

Divided into 7 core tasks with a discussion of each task, the 16-page Toolkit is designed for quick reading and gives you concrete, actionable tasks to make your film submissions package better. Best of all, you'll get the insight you need to better understand what programmers look for and how to submit with confidence.

Download it for free.