Film festivals are an important launching ground for nonfiction filmmakers. Here you will find a carefully-curated selection of international film festivals of interest to our members. The calendar is not meant to be comprehensive or cover the wide selection of issue-focused festivals available to filmmakers, but rather to showcase the very best international film festivals in the world today. Our goal is to provide the community with a solid foundational list with which to plan a festival strategy.
We built the calendar using Airtable — it is a colourful and user-friendly spreadsheet that allows users to view and organize the information that we have collated in a personalized way.
You can view the full list of entries at this link. Here you will see the full list of sortable fields including:
- Festival name
- A-list status
- Types of documentaries accepted
- City, country and region
- Festival start and end dates
- Submission deadlines
- Festival length
- Free submissions
- Website
- And a handy notes section for extra information
We have pre-sorted the grid for you; it is organized alphabetically and grouped by continental region. To ungroup by region, click on the group option on the menu bar and click to close. You can also follow these instructions to download the festivals list to CVS.
We have also created two calendars. The first is a month-by-month schedule of all of the festivals in our database that are happening in the world right now. You can view that calendar here. You can filter and sort the calendar as you wish. For example, you can filter the calendar to show only festivals in your immediate region as shown in the picture below.
And for those wishing to submit to festivals, we have created a calendar with upcoming festival deadlines. These are regular deadlines only and it is important to check with the festival for late and extended deadline options. You can access additional information about a festival by simply clicking on its name. This calendar is also sortable by region, country, A-list status, or any of the variables included in the main database.
Lastly, if you would like to add an entry or modify an existing entry with new information or guidelines, please use this form.
Best wishes with your festival submissions!
