Autumn's Dawn Film Festival

Ah, the fall. Autumn is the time of the year that heralds the changing of times but can also be used to describe the stage of when one fully reaches maturity. This is both your fun fact for the day but also relevant as to why we’re here. It’s a very bizarre time of the year as it’s the only season where you go back to school, watch leaves fall from trees, get haunted and then eat an oversized chicken that you try to tell yourself tastes better just because you paid more for it.

Autumn's Dawn, together with our sister festival Winter's Dusk, presents the beautiful gap between the overly palatable and the overly pretentious. Did you make a movie that you’re having some trouble submitting to film festivals? A dark comedy that’s too intense for your average comedy festival? A brutal horror whose gore factor isn’t high enough? Some genre blend that makes it difficult to market? Well, we want to see it! Got a horror romance? A grindhouse film noir? A hard-R-rated parody of Teletubbies? All that and more is welcome at Autumn's Dawn Short Film Festival.

While we will give special consideration and preference to films that are what you would consider “tough sells,” we also just enjoy any movie that’s good. So, don’t worry; if you’re nervous that your movie isn’t “weird” enough for this festival, we can assure you that it is.

In the words of the late Billy Mays: BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Autumn's Dawn will also feature two sweepstakes for all filmmakers who submit:

1. We know how quickly all of the entrance fees can add up over time. So if you can get at least four guests to purchase a ticket, we will refund your submission fee! (Please note that this refund is retroactive: you can't get it waived just because you super-duper pinky swear that you'll get people to show up.)

2. We also offering a two-tiered submission system. The standard submission will just submit it to the festival, no questions asked. If you pay for the deluxe submission, you'll get a free t-shirt and a free ticket to the festival (standard submitters will need to pay for a ticket as well).

We don’t care where the movie’s from, what language it’s in (as long as it’s subtitled) or who made it. If you’re a fan of the unusual, the funny, the scary or just the plain ol’ good time at the theater, we’d love to see you here.

A NOTE ABOUT PRICES SINCE WE'VE BEEN ASKED A FEW TIMES: We do our best to keep the application fee as low as possible since we know how much these things add up but our trade-off we have is that we do not offer comped tickets to the festivals for submittees. We realize that this sounds a bit crappy but think about it this way: if you don't get in, you saved $20; if you do get in, then the application fee + plus the ticket is basically the same amount of money you spend for any other festival. The price you see for the deluxe ticket (which comes with a free ticket to the festival) is basically the lowest amount of money we could charge while still turning a profit per head. Hope this clears the air!