Why this exists
I have made twelve short films. I have properly put six or seven of them through the festival circuit because, like most independent filmmakers, money becomes the hard limit. Across those runs I have been accepted into more than 200 festivals and I am heading towards 300. I have travelled to festivals around the world, won awards and gathered enough laurels to understand how little they mean on their own.
Festivals can be extraordinary. They can put your film in a room with people who care. They can introduce you to filmmakers you would never otherwise meet. They can give you a deadline, a lift, a sense that the film exists outside your laptop.
They can also mess with your head. The acceptance and rejection balance can grind down your confidence and creativity, especially when the result feels like one programmer deciding whether your film is worthy according to taste, timing, politics or whatever that festival is trying to be that year.
What I believe
- A laurel only matters if the festival gives you something real: a room, an audience, a useful conversation, a filmmaker you stay in touch with, or a reason to keep going.
- There is no point filling a poster with laurels if the festival run becomes a financial and emotional mess.
- The route into larger festivals is rarely straightforward. The quality of the film matters, but it is not always the biggest slice of the pie; connections, support structures and industry access can also influence who gets opportunities.
- A lot of the awards and festival circuit rewards festival-bait and awards-bait films. If that is not the film you want to make, it does not mean you are out of the running creatively. It just means their version of a good film is not the same as a good film.
- Rejection is not a verdict on your film. It usually means your film was not what that festival wanted to screen at that moment.
A healthier way to take rejection
Festival programmers are usually not judging films in some pure, objective way. They are building a programme. That means they are choosing what they want to put on their screen, for their audience, in their context, with their pressures and biases.
That distinction matters. A rejection does not mean the film is bad. It means the film did not fit that programme. Sometimes that is a useful signal. Sometimes it is just noise. Either way, it should not be allowed to wreck the reason you make films.
FestForge is built around that belief: spend carefully, pick festivals you would actually value, understand the odds, protect the budget and keep filmmaking bigger than the inbox.