Networking with film festivals

Me, Daisy and Harry looked at possible animation festivals that we could put our animation 'Le Gens du Mur' into. What with COVID restrictions at the moment however, not all festivals are running and all the ones we entered are running online. Even so, we managed to enter into 12 free festivals from a variety of places over the world. We decided just to enter free festivals for now to see if the animation had any luck in these ones, however if it does do well at all, we may consider putting it into competitions that have an entry fee.

The festivals we entered were:

• Annecy (France)
• Euganea (Italy)
• Busheaur (Iran)
• Animist Tallinn (Estonia)
• Dead by Dawn (Scotland)
• Cortoons Gandia (Italy)
• Kingstoon (Jamaica)
• Supertoon (Croatia)
• T-Short (Latvia)
• Craft (Indonesia)
• Animafest (Slovakia)
• Animest (Romania)

I think that festivals are the best way to get our work out there to new audiences and a great way of networking. It will be interesting to see if anything comes about from entering these competitions. *

*(24th March - Our film has been accepted into the 'Student Film's Out-Of-Competition' for the T-Short Animation Festival in Latvia, which is very pleasing.)

What Went Well

• It was a new experience putting my work into competitions. I now understand this aspect of animation a lot more
• Festivals are a great way of networking and displaying our work
• A lot of animation festivals are still taking place online so we were still able to enter these
• I didn't realise just how many festivals took place and in such a variety of locations
• It is amazing to hear that our film has been accepted into the T-Short Animation Festival

Criticism

• I didn't realise so many details were required to enter a film into a competition. Each application took a lot longer than I expected and is very time-consuming
• We won't hear back from a lot of festivals for a while as some have been postponed
• As we were submitting our work to a lot of festivals abroad, there was sometimes a language barrier on the websites, making it harder to enter details