Comox Valley International Film Festival

FILM COMPETITION RULES

1. Films must be NARRATIVE FICTION only. We do not accept music videos, promotional videos, trailers, and documentaries.
2. All films will be paid a screening fee or honorarium consistent with Canadian standards, in Canadian dollars.
2. Official selections will be chosen by a selection committee, with the assistance of qualified advisors.
3. Winners will be chosen by juries.
4. There will be a winner in each category, although this doesn’t necessarily mean that each winning film will be screened at the festival (this would be a rare situation, i.e., when a film simply doesn’t fit any of the curated themes or there is some other reason it can’t be shown, like graphic sexuality or anything else at the directors' discretion). But nonetheless, the winners will be officially recognized as winning and will receive the laurel and cash prize.
5. In the event that there is only a single film deemed screenable in any given category, that film will be the winner in that category by acclimation (and will not be determined by the jury).
6. Filmmakers may submit as many films as they like in as many categories for which they are eligible.
7. Films screened at previous iterations of CVIFF are not eligible.
8. There are no restrictions on when a film was made.
9. All non-English submissions must have hard-coded English subtitles.
10. Films must be compliant with all copyright laws. If music, artwork, or additional film material used in your film is not original, then permission from source must be obtained. The responsibility for this rests entirely with the filmmaker. Failure to obtain clearance could result in your film being withdrawn from the Festival. In this event, CVIFF will not be liable to refund the fee or return the materials entered.
11. By submitting to the CVIFF, the participant is granting permission to view their film by the Selection and Judging Committee and if selected for screening, is granting permission to screen the film at the CVIFF and use selected clips it in promotional materials (including but not limited to press releases, websites, social media, TV, radio and print). After the festival, CVIFF may post the film online only if the film is publicly available for viewing.
12. If selected for screening at the festival, the filmmaker will be required to submit the following:
• Minimum two high-resolution film stills
• One high-resolution Director's headshot photo
• Brief synopsis of the film (50 words)
• Film exhibition copy in 1080p resolution, in MP4 format
• Film trailer file and/or online link

13. The festival organizers reserve the right to withdraw an offer of official selection and/or an award if the filmmaker is non-responsive to requests for information listed in item 11. of this list, or non-compliant in any other way related to the rules of the festival, or acts in an inappropriate manner that would would reflect negatively on the image and repuation of CVIFF.
14. Once a film has been selected for the festival it may not be withdrawn.
All entrants agree that the decisions of the juries and festival directors are final and there are no procedures for appeal.

SCREENWRITING COMPETITION RULES

1. Winners and placements will be determined by jury rankings.
2. Scripts that have been submitted to previous iterations of the festival are not eligible.
3. While submitters can submit as many scripts as they want in a single category, only the top ranked submission will be eligible for an award (i.e., a submitter cannot win more than one placement in a single category).
4. Each individual script may be entered in only one category.
5. Submitters may compete in a maximum of 2 categories, but in order to do so, they must enter different scripts in each (i.e., see rule #3).
6. Any script that has already been produced into a film is not eligible.
7. All submitted scripts must be formatted in some commonly accepted format and the festival organizer reserves the right to discard improperly formatted submissions (although they will make every attempt to contact writers to get reformatted submissions).
8. All submitted scripts must include both an anonymous and named version of the script.
9. All payments are final and there will be no refunds of script submission fees.
10. There are no restrictions on when a script was written.