Fancy seeing your film screened in Georgia, a land of impressive mountains, green valleys and vineyards? Then get submitting to BIAFF – Batumi International Art-house Film Festival, who has its Late Deadline at the very start of the month – so get on your skates, filmmakers! LGBT issues are a hot topic right now, particularly with the legalisation […]
Andrew Wilkin
Andrew Wilkin is the Client and Community Support Coordinator at FFL. His editorial background has involved working at unlike. His film experience has included a position at moviepilot. Reach him at andrew@filmfestivallife.com
THESS International Short Film Festival, Five Teasers!
Thessaloniki has it all. Great gastronomy, sultry weather and a dynamic history spanning the Hellenic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires. And Greece’s second city also has the THESS International Short Film Festival every October. An annual event devoted to the most cutting edge of cinema, it’s a festival not to miss out on. We spoke with their Festival Director Yiannis Zachopoulos about what […]
Axe Throwing, Rocky Horror and All-Round Quirkiness with Portland Film Festival
Coolest city in the world? Portland, Oregon, is a bona-fide candidate, known for being a craft-beer swigging, alternative culture pioneer. And it’s also the home of the Portland Film Festival. Launched in 2013 by Josh Leake and Jay Cornelius, it’s still a relative newbie but it’s pioneering approach to film programming has seen them create a […]
FilmFestivalLife Filmmakers Selected For Sydney Film Festival 2015
The Sydney Film Festival is upcoming, and it’s looking like a vintage year for the festival. And the stats don’t lie. According to Festival Director Nashen Moodley, ‘as well as adding two new screening venues in Newtown and Liverpool, the numbers of titles to be screened have jumped from 183 last year to 251 this […]
How To Be Fantastic with TOHorror
La Dolce Vita – or in the case of TOHorror, it’s less about the good life, and more about the supernatural life. Indeed, the Turin-based festival is focused on the fantastic genre, the old literary genre defined by an ambiguous presence of supernatural forces. It’s a genre which is constantly posing questions – most notably what’s real, and what’s not. […]
Meet syrian filmmaker Jalal Maghout
Is Berlin the perfect place for foreign filmmakers to create their art? It’s certainly that way for Jalal Maghout, a FilmFestivalLife filmmaker from Syria who currently resides in the German Hauptstadt. Jalal Maghout discusses with us about his animated documentary SULEIMA and his film festival career. Working in the narrow genre of animated documentary, his […]
Meet Gabriele Urbonaite, Director of THE SWIMMER
The Berlinale is great for many things, but one of the most worthwhile arms of the festival is the Berlinale Talents. We had a chat with some of the participants this year, including Gabriele Urbonaite, a FilmFestivalLife writer-director, who is in Berlin to develop her thesis film at the Short Film Station. A short filmmaker with a penchant […]
The Documentary Golden Age with MAKEDOX FILM FESTIVAL
Five years of MakeDox have passed! And it’s a festival well worth submitting too. The Republic of Macedonia and it’s capital Skopje might not be somewhere you are accustomed to, something MakeDox, specialising in creative documentaries, offers you the chance to change. Situated in the grandest of Ottoman buildings, it’s a friendly, innovative festival with a […]
From Florida to Hollywood – SUNSCREEN FILM FESTIVAL salutes 10 years
Sunscreen Film Festival turns 10! Big anniversaries demand some extra oomph, and the upcoming edition of the Florida-based festival has that in spades – parties, concerts and big-name stars galore. Not bad for a festival already with a MovieMaker magazine ’25 Coolest Film Fest’ status and name recognition that saw it expand into a Los Angeles […]
Meet Stefano Casertano on the ‘THE LAST DAYS OF TACHELES’, crowdfunding and online distribution
The name Tacheles is one that hits a spot with any Berliner, native or not. That’s something that’s clear when I see the crowd assembled outside Mindpirates, close to our FFL HQ. The atmospheric, smoky den chosen for the German premiere of FFL filmmaker Stefano Casertano’s THE LAST DAYS OF TACHELES… Casertano’s film is one […]
Deadlines on FilmFestivalLife – Nov 2014
The days are getting darker and shorter in the Northern Hemisphere, but that doesn’t mean the deadlines are going to let up! November’s a big month for deadlines, and there’s a number of highlights.. We start close to home with the Landshut Short Film Festival. Here’s a chat we had with Michael Orth, their Festival Director, that we […]
Meet Barbara Ott & Simon Rühlemann on how ‘SUNNY’ became a festival hit
SUNNY isn’t the sunniest of flicks, but it’s a bona fide festival smash – that’s what! Here’s how ‘SUNNY’ became a festival hit… The story of an 18-year old father, Hajo, who has a new-born baby and is struggling with the transition between adolescence and adulthood, with potentially disastrous results. After winning the 2013 Deutscher […]
Deadlines on FilmFestivalLife – Aug 2014
Welcome to August, filmmakers! Here’s whats coming up for you this month. Returnee festival Razor Reel Flanders Film Festival has its Late Deadline coming up. Check out our chat with them at Cannes – where you’ll get some intriguing nuggets about what they thought about this years Marché du Film… Tasmanian Breath of Fresh Air Film Festival is […]
Meet Christian Koch on the Berlin film scene
Christian Koch on the Berlin film scene, Q&A culture and his film ‘Der Gast’ Perhaps it’s obvious, but witnessing FilmFestivalLife success stories is something we love to see. We love to speak with the big guns behind the festival circuses, but what about our filmmakers too? We got going by chatting with Christian Johannes Koch, whose […]
Deadlines on FilmFestivalLife – July 2014
Midsummer has past and it’s time for July’s Deadline List! ‘Our festival exhibits absolute enthusiasm for short films.‘ This is what Roma Creative Contest – Short Film Festival had to say in our interview with them. With a mandate to show the most innovative short films and a crew made up of only under-30’s, it’s a young and 100% forward-thinking fest! Also […]