Sebastian Nadilo – owner of Asian Film Festivals – brings you the “Call for Entry Guide for Short Films”. The guide is aimed at Asian independent filmmakers, producers and distributors with the objective of providing them with quality information on how to plan and send their movies. In this post he explains his new project.

Introduction:
It’s been four years since I started with this website and since then the page become a source of information not only for cinephiles but also for filmmakers and producers. It is common than some of them send me an email or contact me via Facebook asking me for advices on where to send their films. As much as I would like to help them the answer is never easy. For planning submissions, a lot of factors must be considered, entry fees, dates, cost of delivery, screening formats, and country premier status. With all of this in mind, I decided to create this guide and try to help those who want to send their films abroad.

About this guide:
This guide is aims towards independent filmmakers, producers and distributors FROM ASIA & SOUTH ASIA that are having trouble planning their submissions. Please take in mind that this guide is ONLY for short films. Festivals recommended here were checked and can be trust. Don’t worry if you don’t have a big budget for summing many of the festivals here are free or have low entry fees. For this guide we selected thirty-three (33) festivals and I divided them into four (4) main categories; General Festivals (accepting fictions, docs & animations), Documentary Festivals, Animation Festivals & Themed Festivals (LGTBQ, Women’s Festival, Horror, Fantasy, etc.).

Objective:
To provide information on where and how to summit your short films to different Asian festivals.

List of festivals in this guide:
Aichi International Women´s Film Festival (Japan)
Asiana International Short Film Festival (South Korea)
Bucheon International Animation Festival (South Korea)
Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (South Korea)
Busan International Film Festival (South Korea)
Busan International Kids & Youth Film Festival (South Korea)
Busan International Short Film Festival (South Korea)
Cambodia International Film Festival (Cambodia)
CineKasimanwa: The Western Visayas Film Festival (Philippines)
Davao Ngilngig Festival (Philippines)
Dharamshala International Film Festival (India)
DMZ Korean International Documentary Film Festival (South Korea)
Festival Film Dokumenter (Indonesia)
Film Festival for Women’s Rights (South Korea)
Hiroshima International Animation Festival (Japan)
Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hong Kong)
Jogja NETPAC Asian Film Festival (Indonesia)
Kaohsiung Film Festival (Taiwan)
KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival (India)
Kineko International Children’s Film Festival (Japan)
Korea Independent Animation Film Festival – Indie-Anifest (South Korea)
Kota Kinabalu International Film Festival (Malaysia)
Osaka Asian Film Festival (Japan)
Sapporo International Short Film Festival and Market (Japan)
Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival (South Korea)
Seoul International Extreme-Short Image & Film Festival (South Korea)
Seoul International Women’s Film Festival (South Korea)
Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia (Japan)
Singapore International Film Festival (Singapore)
Taichung International Animation Festival (Taiwan)
Taiwan International Documentary Festival (Taiwan)
Tokyo Anime Award Festival (Japan)
Women Make Waves Film Festival (Taiwan)

Example:

Women’s Film Festival Application Route

PROS You can apply to the four festivals without worrying about premier status restrictions. Three have no submission fees. You could attend all the festivals (One in August, another in September and 2 in October).
CONS: Applying for these themed festivals could interfere with other General Festivals.
FEES: $ 10 USD (only for the Women Make Waves Film Festival [Taiwan])
Number of Festivals: 4
Very important: Directors must be female. For applying to all the festivals your short film must be under 40 minutes.

First we are going to explain the PROS and CONS of the submission route then we are going to discuss how much is going to cost you to apply to all the festivals, please bear in mind that we are only counting Entry Fees and not the cost of you actually sending your DVDs or Blu-rays to the Festival via mail. Luckily some festivals accept online submissions and online screeners, but you may need to send physical media once your short film is selected. Next, we are going to list all the festivals in the route with key information for you to know. Please notice we will tell you dates from 2019 since many of these festivals don’t have dates for 2020, don’t worry usually deadlines and festival dates don’t change much from year to year.

We hope this helps you in sending your productions abroad. In the next article we will show you the submission route for Themed Festivals (Women, LGTBQ, Horror, Fantasy and Kids Festivals) so please stay tuned. Don’t forget you can follow us in Facebook HERE and in our Twitter account HERE. Want to be updated aboutt the guide please send us a message via Facebook, or contact us HERE. Thanks for your time and support.

Sebastián Nadilo