Congratulations on completing your film! Now it’s time to start entering festivals and getting well deserved exposure for your work. The Hackettstown Film Festival is a great place to start!

This year's film theme is: Blood and Guts: The Macabre!

Although small, this intimate and prestigious festival is under the artistic direction of producer, director, writer and entertainment entrepreneur, Chris Lance. His credits include Hunt for the Jersey Devil Interactive Halloween Attraction, The NJ Family and Fantasy Medieval Festival, The Paladin Knight, Moon Magnets (play) and soon to be released "Buffalo Diamonds" (full length film) just to name a few.

Bringing quality, entertaining cinema to the masses is the mission of this competition. Hosted by the Hackettstown Center for the Arts, a non-profit 501(c)3 entity, all proceeds from the Hackettstown Film Festival (HFF) benefit the Arts Center.

Awards & Prizes

Hackettstown Film Festival offers over $1,000 in cash and in-kind sponsor prizes to filmmakers and screenwriters with winners selected by industry professionals - including studio representatives, producers writers and fellow filmmakers. As the we take on more sponsors, the awards will increase.

Rules & Terms

2022 HFF Film Guidelines

Feature Films
• Your film must be over 40 minutes in length.
• All entries submitted to the HFF must be original works by the applicant. If the film is an adaptation or based on source material to which the entrant doesn’t own the rights, permission to adapt the original work must be submitted.
• If your feature film has screened publicly in a theater in the U.S. at one or more non-festival screenings and/or has been acquired and released via any public online distribution platform (streaming, VOD, SVOD, etc.) outside of a limited-time virtual festival event before HFF, it is not eligible for HFF 2022.
• Your project must have been completed in 2019, 2020, 2021 or 2022.
• HFF does not accept trailers or rough assemblies. Please be aware HFF will not screen multiple updates/versions of your film for programming consideration.
• HFF only watches the first cut submitted.
• All feature-length films must be submitted via FilmFreeway.

Short Films
• Your film must be under 40 minutes in length.
• All entries submitted to the HFF must be original works by the applicant. If the film is an adaptation or based on source material to which the entrant doesn’t own the rights, permission to adapt the original work must be submitted.
• If your short film has screened publicly in a theater in the U.S. at one or more non-festival screenings and/or has been acquired and released via any public online distribution platform (streaming, VOD, SVOD, etc.) outside of a limited-time virtual festival event before HFF, it is not eligible for HFF 2022.
• Your project must have been completed in 2019, 2020, 2021 or 2022.
• HFF does not accept trailers or rough assemblies.
• HFF only watches the first cut submitted.
• All short films must be submitted via FilmFreeway.