How To Build The Right Festival Strategy For You & Your Film — in 30+ Steps

Where 'o where are the Festival Strategists when you need them?

Nov 05, 2025

∙ Paid

Cinema-makers often shoot themselves in the foot by not having much of a festival strategy beyond “I am going to apply to Sundance and see if I get in.” Maybe the more flexible sort consider substituting Sundance with Cannes, Berlin, or Venice. Or Toronto, SXSW, or even Tribeca. But that’s not much of a strategy, is it?

Most filmmakers still head to whatever festival they get in, without a second one yet planned, let alone the whole year on the road that most likely will be required for their film to forge the relationships they will need with their audiences. Some of those cinema-makers go forth hoping to get acquired by a distributor and suspect that to have follow up festival berths secured will somehow dampen their chances. It just ain’t so.

Equally distressing are those that have grown so frustrated by our gated system that they choose to abandon the festival circuit altogether. Although community screens, be they micro or larger, represent a core audience both consistent and critical, to NonDē, they don’t represent a large enough base for a film to ever go evergreeen. In putting together a strategy for your film, if you need more than fifty thousand sets of eyeballs, you are going to need a festival strategy.

If you embrace strategic thinking — and why wouldn’t you — you know that both paths of thinking are incredibly outdated, and thus thoroughly foolish. You’ve done your research and analysis long before you get your first festival invite. You have tried to define festivals’ attributes and truths (or maybe relied on mine). You have examined the calendar and past performances of other work in your same subject strand or form. You have defined your goals. You have started to assemble their team. You are now ready to get some advice from their neighborhood film festival strategist.

Unfortunately such necessary advisors don’t yet really exist. Don’t worry though, cuz I got you. Let’s go the DIY way, shall we? Let me guide you down this path. Once you’ve done it for yourself, maybe volunteer to do it for your community for a while. From there you’ll be set. You will have a new side hustle and you can start to expand from there by training new recruits. And soon we will have Festival Strategists in every States. Let’s leave it all better than before, yeah?

I’ve updated this post since publishing it. I updated it on 11/10/25.