Daniel Mills's Lounge Discussions

Why aren’t you submitting your short film into competition at Cannes?

The Cannes film festival is currently taking submissions for this year’s festival (deadline March the first)

The festival recently celebrated its seventieth birthday and is still highly regarded in the industry, and almost every year I take the opportunity to submit a film to the festival for several reasons.

The competition is both Academy and BAFTA qualifying, “Section A” on the recognised festival list (which means that it needs to only be selected for one festival in that Section to qualify)

The Cannes Film Festival is Free to Submit to, where many of the festivals in “Section A” can cost you upwards of $40 for a short film.

Many people opt instead for the shortfilmcorner, a market short films, but unless you splash out on a screening room and try to entice people to come in and see your film people, the chances are nobody will see it among the sea of short films on the system. The big money is paid for French language films. It’s an expensive exercise that can be done just as easily elsewhere cheaper, Clermont-Ferrand’s market is free as is Hamburg Short Film Festival‘s and Palm Springs ShortsFest has a free to enter market (all three of those also run along side BAFTA qualifying festivals)

I’ll admit, the ShortFilmCorner has its uses, it provides two (albeit rather limited) passes into the festival areas. For a fraction of the price of the Marché passes, great if you just want to do Cannes on the cheap, but not much help for making the most of the festival. So if you have no intention of going, just submit into competition.

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https://fromthe3rdstoryproductions.co.uk/festivals/why-havent-you-submitted-your-short-film-to-cannes-5359