Big Water Film Festival

The Big Water Film Festival takes place on the shores of Lake Superior, in Ashland, Wisconsin and surrounding communities. Our Festival headquarters is the Bay Theater on Main Street in Ashland, an Art Deco theater with a completely modernized main screen with stadium seating. We also have screenings at various venues in the communities of Bayfield, Washburn, and Drummond.

Regular attendees at our Festival know it for its friendliness and the ease with which audience members and filmmakers can mingle and chat. Our Friday evening screenings are always preceded by a reception with good food at a bar across the street from the Bay Theater.

Big Water's first twelve years were as a live Festival. Then, in 2020 COVID forced us to cancel what would have been the 13th BWFF. Our 14th Annual Festival (we just decided to skip 13, like the 13th floor at a hotel) was all virtual, and ran from January 7 to March 6, 2022. You can see what films we presented here: https://14thbigwater.eventive.org/welcome.

We accept films of all genres and points of origin. Some of our favorite films have been made by local or Midwest filmmakers and some have come to us from all around the world, including Iran or France or Canada. Our website lists all of our previous award winners. https://bigwaterfilmfestival.org/award-winners-in-previous-years/.

As we open for film submittals for our next Festival (the 15th), we do not yet know if it will be in-person, virtual, or a hybrid. We will have to see where we are at with the pandemic as we get closer to our Festival dates.

If your film is selected and we plan to show it virtually, we will ask your permission before doing so, and you will need to upload a streamable file of your film. For our virtual showings we use the Eventive platform, which provides full DRM anti-piracy protections.

If your film is selected and we plan to show it in-person only, we will ask you for a copy of your film in a format that we can use at our theater and other venues.