If you are a film student or you yearn to be a filmmaker, this article is for you! It’s very likely that at some point you made a short film for which you got all your friends involved, that you broke the car that your father lent you and that you spent last penny. What happened to that short when finished?

Are you preparing your first short at the moment and you are worried about what to do with it afterwards? Polar Star Films has a wide experience in promoting audio-visual projects and we hope these tips on how to promote and distribute your short film will be useful:

1. Learn from your mistakes

If you’ve made your first short, it’s probable that there are things you would change or did not go as expected. It’s okay, it’s totally normal in fact! These things happen when you start something new. You will have to make lots of work and improve your skills to get to a point where you’re comfortable with the results. It’s good to be critical, but there’s much to be learnt from showing your work to others in order to learn from mistakes in order to improve.

2. Watch out for festival eligibility

Before submitting your project in a festival, you should read the regulations carefully. All festivals have a section with this information. Within the regulations you will find details about who can participate, what kind of projects, what production dates are eligible, who is in the jury, if you have any obligations as a participant and all you need to know before you sign up.

3. Cost

Bear in mind that some festivals require a payment on submission. Especially in the US, but sometimes also in Spain and other European events, you will be asked to pay a fee to participate. Some festivals waive submission fees for international submissions. A good trick is to have a planned budget that includes the distribution of the film. This will help you to take good decisions when you face this issue.

4. Where to Premiere

Some festivals require exclusivity, which means that the short cannot have been released in their territory, therefore your fesitval list requires a strategy. You can play with this opportunity more than once. There are festivals which require a World Premiere, others European, others in Barcelona, Madrid … You will find many options and being selected in national festivals will work in your favour when you send your film to international festivals.

5. Do not wait until the last minute to fill the form and send the material

Every festival follows a selection process. Therefore, we recommend that you submit your work in the first phase of the selection process, and the sooner the better. If you send it at the end, the jury is already thinking about other films and, as they must see hundreds of films, it is more difficult for them to decide.

6. Submit your project when completed

Try to submit your short film when completed. If you submit an incomplete version, you’re not giving the jury all the opportunities to fall in love with your work. If you consider that the project still needs tweaking or could be improved, you cannot expect others to give it the benefit of the doubt.

7. Optimise the delivery of material to festivals

UpToFest is a website to upload all the data about your short in one place. It will help you to easily submit your project at festivals since you won’t have to copy the information every time. There are many other websites that work similarly, such as With Out A Box.

8. Get help from a distributor

You also have the option of hiring a distributor like Marvin Wayne or Playtime Audiovisuales. The biggest advantage of hiring a distributor is that, thanks to their experience, they will be able to improve your marketing strategy and they will distribute your film through alternative channels. The disadvantage is that you usually have to pay. Once your film has done the festival rounds then you can make it available for video-on-demand with Filmin or Distrify for example.

9. List of festivals

Finally, if you want to know where you can send your projects and need help looking for festivals, we recommend Catalan Films . Here there is a list of festivals that allows you to filter by location, type of film and more.

10. Have fun!

Whatever you do, remember that the most important thing is to have fun!

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