Just Film Festival (Birmingham) is a two week online film festival mixing feature length and short films that help us to imagine a better world. It runs online from 18 June - 4 July 2021. The festival will include ten feature films and 20 shorts in a variety of genres including drama, documentary and animation. Our members have already suggested feature length films from a wide range of established and emerging filmmakers. We are inviting submissions of short films of up to 5 minutes duration.

The Festival is being run by Birmingham Co-operative Film Society, with support from Central England Co-op and the Co-operative News. Birmingham Co-operative Film Society (aka Birmingham Film Co-op) has been screening monthly social justice films under the slogan "Just Film: for a fairer world" since 2010.

The culmination of the festival will be an in-person awards ceremony and film screening at The Warehouse Cafe in Digbeth, Birmingham - part of the building where we hold regular monthly screenings. The event will be on the afternoon of Sunday 4th July from 3.30-7.00pm. The awards will be presented by festival sponsors/partners, Debbie Robinson, Chief Executive of Central England Co-operative Ltd. (an £800M retail co-op society) and Rebecca Harvey, Executive Editor of Co-op News (a UK and international news service for the Co-operative Movement).

See www.justfilm.coop/festival for more details.

Awards & Prizes

Short Films are invited in three categories. These are - Telling Co-operative Stories, Social Justice Documentary and Social Justice Drama. A panel of judges will select the top films from each category, these will then be promoted and screened as part of the festival. An overall winner in each category will be selected and the Director given a £150 cash prize. Further category details can be found in the descriptions for each category.

All categories will be judged on the following criteria: originality, content, narrative, creativity, cinematography, pacing and performance.

There is an additional prize - selected from across all categories - for the best submission where the participants are all aged 25 and under. Please request consideration for this category when completing your entry form.

Rules & Terms

Within the three categories we welcome short film submissions in all genres and in languages other than British English. The films should include English subtitles if in other languages. The films must have a maximum length of 5 minutes. If selected for screening, please let us know if this will be your film’s premiere.

1 - In order to submit a film, you must own all the rights, including for any audio tracks used, or have permission from the owner.
2 - The Festival accepts submissions by FilmFreeway only.
3 - Your film should have been made since January 2019 and must not be on general release.
4 - The Festival will engage exclusively with the film submitter.
5 - Just Film Festival can use parts of your film (including trailer/teaser/film poster) for promotional purposes.
6 - Entry fees are non-refundable.
7 - You cannot withdraw your submission after the official selection announcement.
8 - Any film that is not in English must have English subtitles.
9 - Not all the submissions are selected for the final competition. Our judges are free to make their own choices within the criteria and no answers will be given about non-selected films.
10 - Just Film Festival can consider any film to be disqualified if the Festival considers the content inappropriate.
11 - Filmmakers can submit a film in more than one category where appropriate.
12 - A fee is required for each category submission.
13 - An applicant can submit more than one film but each one must have a separate entry and fee
14 - The applicants (submitters) must accept Just Film Festival Rules and Terms.
15 - Maximum length allowed is 5 minutes.
16 - Just Film Festival will judge the films based on the quality of the film received, and will screen them via external software. Just Film Festival will not be held responsible for any technological problems that may interrupt enjoyment of the short submitted.
17 - All films selected to be screened at the Festival will be notified in advance. It is the responsibility of the person submitting to then send a digital copy of the film to the address in the 'you've been selected' email.