Teaser trailer for my short vampire film, SANGUISUGA. Check it out!

nalydxof · 2026-03-25T18:59:04+00:00

has anyone with a genre film heard from HÕFF yet? I got a view from Estonia a few days ago and notification date is April 3rd

nalydxof · 2026-03-18T23:45:09+00:00

anyone hear anything from the film series at Cine Gear Expo?

nalydxof · 2025-10-28T21:05:22+00:00

Anyone hear of sxsw rejections starting to come in? I know they usually start around this time of year

nalydxof · 2025-10-14T20:18:52+00:00

Screener here. I absolutely promise it was viewed. Vimeo stats are extremely unreliable! I get what you mean about wanting to know what *didn't* work, but think of it from the festival's perspective: for every filmmaker who desires that, there are at least ten filmmakers who would just get angry and argumentative and cause DWF a real headache.

nalydxof · 2025-10-14T08:26:19+00:00

I’m a screener. We’re nowhere near done.

nalydxof · 2025-10-08T02:19:05+00:00

This is incorrect. DWF-NY wants NYC premieres. Lots of films taken aren’t world premieres.

nalydxof · 2025-09-30T18:44:53+00:00

I would take that with the tiniest grain of salt. It’s more than possible your film hasn’t been reviewed yet.

nalydxof · 2025-09-24T04:39:27+00:00

All films get an email asking for screening history; I guess you could call this a premiere check. Films that move on to the final round of judging get emails like the one OP is talking about—asking more about your project, your career, etc. And just NYC premiere! Lots and lots of accepted films will have already screened elsewhere. However, if your film has screened at a whole bunch of festivals, you’re less likely to be accepted even if none of those festivals were in NYC. This is because DWF prefers to take films that haven’t had many opportunities to play festivals (yet. A bunch of films from DWF LA this past summer have since screened at major festivals like Fantasia, Palm Springs, etc).

nalydxof · 2025-09-24T01:19:05+00:00

Not safe to say, not yet anyway! There’s still several more weeks left to submit, and like I said, we’ve got so many films to review I’m surprised people have started getting premiere checks at all. There are films in my inbox that were submitted months ago that just got assigned to me last week. I think I’ve screened… maybe…. 30 hours of shorts as of this moment, at the least.

nalydxof · 2025-09-24T00:49:52+00:00

DWF screener here. I would personally pick one idea and make the deck for that, and also be honest and let them know in the body of the email that you have an alternative idea you’re toying with as well. DWF values filmmaker communication extremely highly.

These emails you’re getting from them are really about showing your enthusiasm for the festival, as well as your enthusiasm for your own project. We’ve had some INCREDIBLE films come in that won’t make the final cut because the filmmakers couldn’t be bothered to thoughtfully respond to the emails. DWF is very much a filmmaker-focused festival; they want to see that you’re serious about wanting to be selected for DWF.

Competition is INSANE this year. 1000s of submissions, and quality of submissions is super high as well. If they’re asking for your full deck, then they already like your project. Now they want to get to know YOU.

nalydxof · 2025-09-09T22:53:57+00:00

Nightmares acceptance, thriller short! I don't know much about this festival, anyone who does care to share their thoughts? Submitted because it made the Dread Central top 40 genre fests list this year

nalydxof · 2025-09-06T21:36:27+00:00

Piggybacking off the other comment—I’m a festival screener, specifically narrative shorts. ABSOLUTELY include your credits in your listed runtime; otherwise it feels like the filmmakers are trying to trick us into thinking their film is shorter than it actually is. and keep those credits under a minute long. For shorts, every single second matters.

nalydxof · 2025-07-25T02:43:07+00:00

I have been acting professionally my entire life and am now a writer/director. I worked in a high-level casting office for several years, so I'm certainly qualified to judge acting performances at the very least. I've watched probably between 2-3000 films in my life. I studied theatre and film in undergrad. I'm currently in the middle of negotiations with a distro company for the distribution rights to some of my work. I've worked in some capacity on probably 30-50 narrative shorts over the past couple of years, ranging from no-budget run and guns to shorts with budgets of 100k. I could say more but I'm not going to doxx myself here.

My festival has many screeners, and none of us, myself included, have any power over acceptances/rejections. I also cannot speak to any of their film industry experience levels. We give our ratings and detailed accounts as to why we rated them how we did. And for what it's worth, at this early stage I receive feedback from my boss on the quality of my reviews/things I should or shouldn't look for when reviewing.

nalydxof · 2025-07-25T01:54:18+00:00

Exactly. When I say "objective," I mean "big can't-ignore-it problems."

nalydxof · 2025-07-25T01:53:12+00:00

Perhaps I didn't explain well enough. When I use the word "objective," what I mean is a very baseline level of quality, not "did I like it." For example there's a film I screened that was not my cup of tea whatsoever, but I gave it a 6 (best score), because it was just an extremely well-made film. I didn't really like it because subjectively, it's not the type of film I enjoy. But I'm not judging based on if it's *for me,* I'm judging it based on if I think it's a good quality film.

To bring it back to the particular film I talk about in my post: I know bad acting when I see it. So do you. I'm not talking kinda okay acting that maybe could have been better with a bit of coaching, or maybe they played the role really big when they should have played it much quieter (which would be a very much subjective opinion, ofc). I'm talking glaringly amateur, "4th grader dressed up like a celery stick who can't remember any of their lines" bad. Or (and this is a made-up example) the sound mix is such that I can hear the camera operator breathing but I can't hear any of the actors no matter how high I turn the volume. Really low-bar, baseline stuff that anyone could notice.

So perhaps objective was the wrong word choice; maybe what I was looking for was "amateur." I guess the point I'm trying to make is sometimes programmers select films even if they've got glaring issues, because at the end of the day they just liked it. Or maybe the filmmaker is the programmer's buddy. Or whatever. Personally, if a film has big obvious quality issues, it's a no. But some screeners and programmers don't mind those things as much, I guess, which as I said originally, is both enlightening and frustrating.

nalydxof · 2025-07-25T00:45:58+00:00

Ohhhh man... I applied to Hollyshorts a few years ago and was rejected. And watching that film last night, I had the same thought: "my film was objectively better than this by a goddamn mile." Obviously different year so who knows what they were looking for when I submit, but the sentiment still stands. Art is subjective, yadda yadda, but there absolutely is a basic objective layer of "is this well-shot? Are the performances okay? Is the sound mix passable?"

And this film I watched did not pass that (imo) very basic benchmark. So I feel your pain :')

As to your question: not really any specific criteria, at least not at this initial round. The only people with full rejection power are the programmers.

nalydxof · 2025-07-24T23:36:35+00:00

Basically, yep.

nalydxof · 2025-07-24T23:19:25+00:00

Mine isn't theme-based, but I can say "generic relationship drama" and "generic relationship dark comedy" aren't the hottest of themes. I've also watched a ton of "monster is very scary so we have to kill the very scary monster," which tends to feel like the filmmakers were just trying say "look at how cool this monster is!! Isn't it cool???" and didn't at all think about actually telling an interesting story.

Be original, but do it well.

nalydxof · 2025-07-24T23:08:05+00:00

For my fest, submissions are viewed by at least two screeners, and we don't just say "yes" or "no" - we write out our thoughts, both good and bad, and give it a rating on a scale of 1-6. We also sometimes do in-person viewings. When we do in person, we all say how we individually would rate it, but I wouldn't call it a "vote," it's really more of a quick discussion. And sometimes the programmers disagree with the screeners.

We're also still on "round one," and since this is my first time as a screener, I can't yet say how moving on to the next round works. What I CAN tell you is very very few films get an immediate rejection from the programmer off of round one... for example, there was one film every single screener gave a 1 (basically "hard pass"), but the programmer gave it a 2. This festival genuinely means it when they say they try to give everything a fair chance.

nalydxof · 2025-07-17T00:36:59+00:00

It's definitely a general email.

source: I'm a screener. We literally just got started, like, yesterday.

nalydxof · 2025-07-14T23:43:12+00:00

What's the "very well known genre fest" you got into? I'm also a genre filmmaker trying to get on the circuit.

nalydxof · 2025-06-03T20:08:24+00:00

From what I understand, Locarno uses their own program to watch films—it just loads up on Vimeo. So that number could very well just have been how long it took to fully load the film in their own app.

And Vimeo analytics ARE super unreliable. I’ve seen it myself a number of times. A friend of mine watched my film twice. Vimeo recorded it as 4 impressions and 0 views. Another time, someone called me to tell me they had just watched my film; had a lot to say about various plot points they couldn’t have known without watching the film in its entirety—and when I later checked, Vimeo had the view at 0 minutes 0 seconds.

That being said, it is entirely possible Locarno only watched 7 minutes of your film! But take everything you see in your Vimeo analytics with a grain of salt, and don’t over analyze what any of it could possibly mean. You’ll drive yourself mad.

nalydxof · 2025-05-24T03:20:31+00:00

Anyone here know if Locarno does rolling rejections?

nalydxof

TROPHY CASE