Chicago Made Shorts is the digital home of Chicago’s great filmmakers, hosted on IGTV @chicagomadeshorts. We strive to uplift the Chicago film community by providing a robust online platform to showcase the city’s great work. We accept short films of all genres and types from local filmmakers that produce their work in the city and the Chicagoland area. Help us to show the world what Chi-town has to offer.

READ BEFORE SUBMITTING. We are NOT your typical FilmFreeway Festival. We are hosted on IGTV and are a local platform designed to be a digital library.

***We do NOT want to interfere with your film's festival run. Be aware that many film festivals disqualify films that are available online to the public. Come to us AFTER you get all of those shiny film festival laurels!***

-YOU MUST OWN THE FULL RIGHTS TO THE FILM. (You agree that you have obtained consent from any and all owners, creators, writers, producers and/or other authorized representatives of the film whose consent is required to submit the Project to Chicago Made Shorts)
-To be considered, your film MUST have been made in Chicago or the Chicagoland area and your director/producer/lead actor must be from Chicago. On a case-by-case basis, we also consider films produced by Chicago filmmakers outside of the city, and films produced by non-Chicago filmmakers within the city.
-We CANNOT showcase films with graphic nudity, excessive violence or explicit sex, due to Instagram’s policies.

What We Look For:
First and foremost, we consider the quality and emotional impact of the storytelling. We also consider the skill of craftsmanship and production value. You can find our full rubric on our website.

What to Expect:
All accepted submissions will receive proper credit on the Instagram post and other postings. We WON'T monetize your film. If you ever need us to take down your film for any reason, let us know and we'll remove it, no questions asked. Similarly, we do NOT guarantee indefinite placement and may move/remove the film from our channel.

Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Elliott Blackburn

    Really fun festival, happy to be apart of something like this.

    January 2022
  • Tasnim Hindeyeh

    a truly amazing and inclusive film festival.

    January 2022
  • Kevin Lucero Less

    Thank you so very much for selecting our film "The Disease"! It is a true honour to be apart of a fantastic organization such as yours. We are very grateful for the opportunity, and highly recommend Chicago Made Shorts to all filmmakers in Chicago.

    January 2022