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“The fact that my film’s been denied at every festival I’ve submitted it to so far really makes me question my perception of its quality. I want an unfiltered, professional opinion to tell me what’s going on.“

Get brutally honest feedback on your film from seasoned festival programmers and fellow filmmakers, for less than the price to submit to the average festival.

NARRATIVE SHORTS

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS

EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS

You’ll get a comprehensive chat with us where you’ll learn:

  • The top three reasons a festival programmer would say “No” to your film
  • What your film’s best quality is
  • The one aspect of your film that should be improved most
  • What film festival you have the best chances of getting into (based on our knowledge of what other festivals are looking for)

WORLD WIDE

Doesn’t matter what country you’re in, we’ll give feedback. Make sure to have subtitles for non-English shorts!

PRIVATE

No need to send a physical copy. An unlisted/private online link will do!

WITHIN 72Hrs

We’ll follow up with you within 24 hours, and send you personalized feedback within 72 hours.

Your hands are sweating from how nervous you are.

Is the sound okay? Did I mess up that transition? Damn! Do I need a press kit?

You do a frantic mental double check, pay the fee, and press submit. PHEW!

…And then what? …Nothing for months.

Finally an email comes from the festival and you just glimpse the word “Unfortunately…”. You think just two words. “F… you…”

The worst thing isn’t that you didn’t get in. It’s that they don’t even tell you why you didn’t get in. And I really hate that too.

Hi, I’m Curt. I’m the director of indiefilmTO and I know how much that feeling can be SOUL CRUSHING because you don’t know what to do to improve your film!

So you end up submitting the same film, with the same flaws (that you’re not even sure what they are!) to festival after festival, and it can seem like you’re just rolling dice.

It’s not just you and me that hates this. In fact, our whole staff at indiefilmTO is made of filmmakers and we’ve submitted to 100’s of festivals, with similar results. The good news is, recently, we’ve been festival programmers too.

It’s such a different world being a festival programmer and no one will tell you honest truth about what it’s like.

For example, did you know about the “Rule of The First 3”? Even TIFF’s programmers do this when reviewing films (we know because this comes straight from the CEO of TIFF himself).

If the film hasn’t hooked the programmers by the first three shots, they reject it.

If it passes that test, then they only give it three minutes.

It’s little things like that we’d like to impart onto you, and actually have a dialog as well. This way you can ask questions.

So feel free to submit your short by clicking below. We’ll take a look and give you specific criticism on the film from a programmer’s perspective, as well as any other perspectives you would like (for example, if you’re an actor/director and you want feedback on the acting, you can let us know to pay attention that).

Oh and it also comes with a money-back guarantee…

Our “Cloud 9 Guarantee”

If you don’t absolutely love the feedback you get, just let us know after the video chat, and we’ll give you 100% of your money back, no questions asked. Why are we offering this guarantee?

Because I believe a lot in my festival programmers here, and I know that the value you get from them will be 10x what you pay for. I know you’ll love it, and learn things about your film that you haven’t known before because you were too close to it. We all know what that’s like.

That’s why we offer this guarantee. Plus, if you don’t love it, then we want you to be 100% happy and not feel ripped off. Filmmakers get ripped off all the time, with rental costs, with legal deals, etc. and we don’t wanna contribute that one bit. We love you. I love you.

Okay, that’s enough for now…

– Curt