The Fargo Film Festival is the premier annual moving picture event in the state of North Dakota. Featuring more than 100 movies every March, the five day festival takes place at the historic Fargo Theatre, a beautiful, 870-seat art deco movie palace equipped with a Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ.

The Fargo Film Festival showcases work from all over the world and routinely programs movies that go on to receive distribution. In recent years, the festival has hosted several Oscar-nominated filmmakers and many Oscar-nominated films.

The festival's Ted M. Larson Award honors individuals who have demonstrated outstanding, longtime contributions to film education, film production, film culture, and/or film criticism and history. Recipients of the Ted M. Larson Award include George A. Romero, John Waters, Hal Hartley, Don Hertzfeldt, Janet Leigh, Richard Edlund, and Leonard Maltin.

The Fargo Film Festival names winners in each of its seven categories and also honors films with several special awards.

Movies must be submitted electronically through the FilmFreeway. No physical media, including DVD and Blu-ray, are accepted as submission copies.

If selected, submitters are required to provide a file of their movie in DCP format, the industry standard for theatrical exhibition. With the exception of 2-Minute Movie Contest selections, DCP is the only accepted exhibition format of the Fargo Film Festival.

Moviemakers must provide a high-resolution image from their movie.

Movies must have been completed after January 1, 2021.

Moviemakers are responsible for obtaining all necessary rights and releases for public screening of their work.

Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Andrew Howell

    Great festival! Incredibly honored to play alongside such a wonderful program of films. Fargo Theatre is a great venue and the crowds are quite supportive.

    May 2023
  • Thank you Fargo for having our incredible client The Diamond (dir. Vedran Rupic) screen!

    May 2023
  • Liang-Chun Lin

    Thank you for having A Dire Strait, for the Honorable mention and the great communication :)

    April 2023
  • Christopher Rucinski

    This was the last festival to finish a year-long run for our feature film Northern Shade. Emily and her team (Adam, Sean, Matt, Christine!) are amazing and very thoughtful. This is a filmmaker's festival with well curated programs, panels and plenty of networking opportunities every night, all in quaint downtown Fargo. The Fargo Theater is stunning. Fargo FF should be ranked a top ten US festival!

    April 2023
  • Geoffrey Prather

    Wow! Just an incredible fest in every sense. Emily is an amazing festival director and her communication is top-notch. The theater is beautiful and the quality of films was stellar. Can't wait to submit future projects and come back to do it all again!

    April 2023