most festivals have deadlines to accept your official selection

As a filmmaker you work for months, sometimes years on your project. You submit to a festival, the notification date passes and you hear… Nothing? But then you check in FilmFreeway and see that you were disqualified? But you didn’t even know you were accepted! How did this happen?

Unfortunately, this is an all too common problem with Filmmakers. Film Festivals work very hard to narrow down selections and most festivals have deadlines to accept your official selection.

This is because they have so many things to get ready for the event like DCPs, tech prep, social media posts, and everything else needed to prepare for the main event, and if you do not reply to accept your official selection, it could result in your project being disqualified and replaced with another.

There are many reasons why a filmmaker will not accept their selection status, such as premier status at other festivals. Festivals will do their best to notify filmmakers but in the end if you are not responsible and reply for your own project, you could get left in the dust wasting your money on your submission and letting down your team.

The main reason filmmakers do not respond: they unsubscribed from FilmFreeway or festival emails

This is an action done on your end that blocks emails from being received by you. A festival will not be notified that emails were not delivered to you when you unsubscribe and it results in the festival scrambling to replace your project and worst case, your project being disqualified.

This is always tragic for all parties involved so here are steps you can take to make sure this never happens to you:

• Make sure your email in FilmFreeway is an email you will check frequently. Most filmmakers have a separate email address that is specific to their project or production company where all film related emails can go so it does not crowd up their personal email inbox.
• Set calendar reminders for notification dates so you can check in FilmFreeway and reach out if you do not hear anything.
• Always check your spam folder around notification dates to double check emails did not accidentally go to your spam folder.
• NEVER unsubscribe from FilmFreeway or festival emails. When you unsubscribe, you will not be delivered ANY emails, including updates to your selection status.
• If the emails are too much for your inbox, have them forwarded to a folder that you can check regularly to review for festival selection notices.
• If you think you unsubscribed by accident, you can always reach out to the festival to add you back to their list or provide another email address.

These small steps can have huge rewards and make you and your project much more organized leading up to festivals.

For more tips on how to improve your film festival submission, check out our guide, the Film Festival Submitter’s Guide!