The Hemet Film Festival is an annual celebration of independent film hosted at the Historic Hemet Theatre, a beautiful 100-year-old movie palace located in the heart of downtown. All films and parties will be hosted at the theater so filmmakers and audiences can experience this one-of-a-kind location.

Our main focus is to feature work that was made in Southern California’s Inland Empire region. We invite local students (K-12 and College) to submit their work for free and give them their own Saturday Night Program. We will also screen works from across North America and around the world to bring a taste of international independent cinema to our community. What kind of movies are people making out there?

We are looking for creative, scrappy, and resourceful films made by filmmakers with unique visions. Our motto is: "Necessity breeds creativity." This is something the fine folks of Hemet understand well!

The 2nd Annual Hemet Film Festival will be held from November 8-11, 2024. Filmmakers who get into the fest will receive 2 free passes and All-Access Passes will be sold for the affordable price of $20. We always want the festival to be accessible to the community and welcoming to up-and-coming filmmakers.

We have expanded the festival to 2.5 days and are excited to be showing feature films this year! If you are a filmmaker in Southern California, please let us know if you have a feature film you want to premiere at the Fest! Let's make it a party.

-2024 PROGRAM-

FRIDAY, November 8th
Opening Night Party / Opening Night Film
We want to premiere a feature film from an Inland Empire Filmmaker!
Theater will be open to filmmakers and guests by 4PM
Program begins at 7PM

SATURDAY, November 9th
Short Film Blocks followed by Filmmaker Q&As
Blocks will generally be an hour long and organized by either genre, format, or theme. We base the programming off of what films we receive as opposed to picking categories ahead of time.

SUBMISSION CATEGORIES INCLUDE:
Animation, Experimental, Documentary, Southern California Filmmakers, Student Showcase, International, Music Video.
Again, they could be programmed in any block. Our goal is to curate a unique and entertaining experience for our audience and not just throw a bunch of random shorts together.

The Student Showcase will conclude Saturday night's programming at 7pm and then we'll have a special FREE SCREENING for the community at 9pm. TO BE ANNOUNCED!

SUNDAY, November 10th
MORE SHORT FILMS, MORE FEATURE FILMS!
Closing Night Party, Remarks, Photos

What we learned from the first year is that people like to hang out just as much as they like to watch movies. We want to show interesting films AND foster a filmmaking community in the local area. Watch Movies, Meet Interesting People. Sounds fun, right?

Hemet is a... unique place. Have you ever been there? Submit a movie and come find out for yourself! Find out why everyone keeps talking about this Hemet place.
DO NOT GO ON URBAN DICTIONARY AND LOOK UP "HEMET"

Awards & Prizes

There are no awards and prizes at this time. No one likes to sit through a film festival award ceremony. For our first year, we did have one short film that was SO GOOD we had to give an award to it. So who knows! Maybe that will happen again. The movie was called "Tropical Mind" by Bryce Mackie.

Rules & Terms

Filmmakers retain all rights to their work and agree only to show their films during the in-person run of the festival. At this time, there are no online screenings and everything will be shown live at the Historic Hemet Theatre, a 100 year old movie palace in Downtown Hemet, CA.

By submitting to the film festival, filmmaker's work will be reviewed and scored by our team of screeners. When programming, we are looking for a diverse selection of films that will be enjoyed by the fine folks of Hemet. If you have a connection to Hemet, the Inland Empire or Southern California region, please include that in our cover letter. We are hoping to create relationships with filmmakers in the community. We want this to be a venue for filmmakers to show their work for years to come.

5 Reviews
Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Bryce Mackie

    The Hemet film festival is simply amazing.

    March 2024
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  • Graham Cooper

    Great people to deal with, in it for the love of film. Can't wait until next year!

    November 2023
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  • Jon Thor

    OVERALL RATING:

    Based off the Objective Bias, I believe this Film Festival is gradually a well-needed place for newly established film-makers from the lowest peaks to those who need the recognition so they too can aspire elsewhere to other Film Festivals. I will not give my opinion of why it is needed in the inland empire, in the most objective way possible, it is a necessity to have people sign up to festivals like this. While in 2023, it was its first official Hemet Film Festival, I believe this Film Festival has provided the best it could offer than any other Film Festival in 2023.

    To give off my opinion; I have been dealing with rejection for almost an entire year. Rejection in the most general form; from applying to get a Master's Degree in any format I can so I can having a teaching career; rejection in festivals; (one in the worst place, and I feel bad because I told people to sign up to that festival and while they were "Selected" and as the emails stated the "big screen", but it wasn't presented on the big screen but a TV screen & then the other made lots of sense to me and I honored/respected them gratefully as the work there was high-tier). This place has allowed my short film to be presented so I can only say good things.

    QUALITY/VALUE:

    What the Hemet Film Festival provides gives the wholesome capability of the youth, aspiring, experienced, and even some of the industry to showcase their work to the public in the hopes of getting everyone together to work on their future projects.

    I highly appreciated everyone's work at the Hemet Film Festival.

    COMMUNICATION:

    The Communication of the Website, content presented, the hosts have presented a means of successful verbiage to audience, guests, staff that brought the message, mission, and goal of what the Hemet Film Festival were trying to address. Those within the panels during Q/A have also presented positive verbiage to the audience if they were guests, friends of the film-makers, aspiring artists, etc to work better.

    NETWORKING:

    From my own observations, who also came to the Opening Night (November 10th, 2023) in addition to the beginning of the Showcasing of each Film Segment on November 11th, 2023; I realized that while there was great networking involved; in reality, the people who were truly doing any networking were those involved in a field of their own versus the actual audience; those of the audience were more in support of a certain filmmaker they personally know, in support of the community, or just there for a fun time. Keep in mind that film-makers are most interested in actors, make-up artists, and anyone with practical effects. Animators are interested in different methods of animation and art; networking sadly is about needs and wants. This is my objective opinion.

    This then creates groups into social divisions of interest; which actually helps people know who to speak to. However, if certain individuals lack that ability to socialize or interact; there will be that small number of people... my only words of advice is for those who read this.. just walk up to the person, listen in, talk to them; and if they have a weird bias against you for no apparent reason, who cares; they can dislike you all you want, but you are still human and you can network with other people at the event; the goal is to brand yourself, network, communicate, and in the end of the day, connect with them. This is my subjective opinion.

    HOSPITALITY:

    Staff of the Historic Hemet Theatre were nice and understanding. The actual team of the Hemet Film Festival were also open-minded and people you can communicate with.

    SUGGESTIONS:

    This is my Subjective Opinion; I felt that while through new articles and other media press packages they presented an ideal organization of certain timed agendas. However while the success-rate of the website's information was adequate to November 11th, it failed to present information about November 10th. Through thorough investigation through social media and news articles from the Press Enterprise; the information details about November 10th were established; but even from those details it wasn't vivid enough to communicate if there was a price-tag for November 10th Opening Night. There was a bit of confusion on this part; but with minor quality management this can be fixed easily. This is only a suggestion when it looking up times and dates for other parts of the Agenda.

    November 2023
    Helpful
  • Anika Jensen

    What a wonderful group of people Daniel and the other creators of this festival brought together. A great place to make connections, share some laughs, and get to know some new people. Lovely old theater too!

    November 2023
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  • Jason Nicholls

    What an amazing time at Hemet Film Fest! Everything from the location, to the organizers, to the overall structure of the event was fantastic. The 100 year old theater was such a cool spot to even just hang around inside, let alone watch a bunch of rad shorts. The organizers did such a great job with scheduling the blocks and Q&As, it made the whole festival run incredibly smooth. The staff were all very welcoming and friendly, creating a fun and safe atmosphere for both the filmmakers and the audience. I highly recommend this festival, and look forward to next years event!

    November 2023
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