Hey Filmmakers: Here Are 5 Film Festival Deadlines You Should Definitely Pay Attention To

With the big guns of the fall festival circuit — Toronto, Venice and Telluride — all over, filmmakers with recently completed — or close to completed — shorts or features should be thinking about deadlines for the next circuit.

READ MORE:  5 Tough Love Tips For Getting Your Film Into Film Festivals

Starting in January with Sundance, this circuit is absolutely the most important for independent filmmakers, with programming typically showcasing the majority of the best films from new or up-and-coming filmmakers you’ll see in a given year (festivals like Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Telluride certainly offer some too, but it’s not the same kind of focus). Just in the past couple years, they have collectively given us “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Fruitvale Station,” “Short Term 12,” “Pariah,” “Middle of Nowhere,” “Weekend,” “The Spectacular Now,” “Martha Marcy May Marlene”… All from filmmakers we’d yet to really discover before their films hit those festivals.

So if you have high hopes for your current project, here’s the submission dates for 5 festivals that have had varying degrees of breakout films in the recent past. It’s certainly not as easy as submitting (these are obviously extremely competitive festivals so you best have the cinematic goods to back up your dreams — not to mention you should follow these 5 tips), but this is where you start, in chronological order:

1. Sundance Film Festival

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