It’s a new year, and you’ve probably made your fair share of resolutions. But we have one more for your list: Attending film festivals. As a filmmaker, you probably fall into one of two camps. First, you already know why you should go to them and are tying to decide which film festivals in 2020 to attend. Second, you’re either unconvinced or unsure if they’re worth the effort.
Drea watches more than 350 films every single year and plays an active role in whether they’re successful or not. She’s well aware of the uphill climb many filmmakers face to get accepted — she said Sundance receives around 14,000 submissions every year and only 100 actually get a premiere. So, in an effort to make that climb a little more friendly, we decided to chat with Drea to put together a rough guide for getting into film festivals.
Writing is maybe the most difficult of all creative pursuits. There is no momentum. In fact, there are many things actively resisting anything resembling momentum, starting with that looming blank page. William Goldman once said, “The easiest thing to do on earth is not to write” and he was absolutely right.
It’s hard to rank films for so many reasons. First and foremost, the true value of a film lies solely with the viewer — what did you take away from it? The only metric that truly counts in our book is how a film affects someone. That’s the mindset we had going into the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. There were hundreds of great films by great filmmakers debuting and we only had the chance to see a small percentage of them. So, instead of going for “best” or “worst”, we’re going for impact. This article is an effort to shed some light on notable films that struck us at the festival — not an end-all, be-all film review.
