Hello there, filmmakers! :~)
Mentone Film Festival is accepting both shorts and feature films for our Fall '24 event.
Our main festival categories are comedy, documentary, animation, romance, thriller/horror, mystery, and western. This festival accepts shorts and features, though there is more space for short films than longer featured films. Please keep this in mind while submitting!
We at Mentone Film Festival are firm believers of free speech, independent thought, and expression. We encourage filmmakers to be honest with their voice and struggles, and thus do not have an extensive set of rules (outside of a few easy ones listed below.)
We do, however, have a few rules for submission to this festival:
- Please let us know if you are local to Southern California, as we prefer to select at least a handful of SoCal submitters.
- Films are either submitted in the English language, or have adequate, readable subtitles.
- Hatefulness/ bigotry is not condoned and these films will not be considered.
- Films which are excessively explicit in sexual nature/ nudity will not be considered. This is due to our effort to keep the festival somewhat family friendly.
- Though we do have an interest in music video submissions, this would likely be ran during breaks between the festival. We will absolutely give ample credit/ recognition to featured content creators, but since we may not give out an award for this specifically, we encourage you to submit during our free entry period or email for a waived fee.
- This is a serious festival; please submit serious work. This is *not* meant to scare away students/ first-time filmmakers/ low- budget productions. Please continue reading for clarification on what this means.
- One entry per filmmaker.
Mentone Film Festival is currently receiving many submissions for free entry at this time. Because of this, we request that submitted films are of good quality (ex. no vertical films, very low quality, etc.) and that only *one* film is submitted per filmmaker (unless requested beforehand at mentonefilm@protonmail.com). Our goal is to keep submissions free for several months so everyone has a chance to share their work, but we are also a very small staff with time restraints. For this reason, we ask filmmakers to submit only one entry, as well as making sure submissions are *serious*.
A blurry 20 second video of a bug walking through the house is an example of a non-serious submission (and yes, we have received this).
Please use your best judgement here.
Additionally, if you *cannot* pay the fee once our free submission slot has ended or you are a returning filmmaker, please feel free to send an email! We cannot waive for every submitter, but will do as much as we can make time for. Please list "Fee Waiver" in the subject line.
** Note for early deadline/ free submissions: Due to time restraints, we are unable to provide feedback for free submissions that have not been accepted to the festival. With a large amount of free entries and limited staff, it is not possible to get back to everyone at this time.
**Note for paid submissions: Filmmakers who have paid a submission fee (or received a waived fee) are welcome to email us for feedback. Paid submissions will be prioritized in terms of receiving requested feedback and will receive extra consideration while viewing. However, we will not judge free and paid films unfairly.
Thank you for understanding and supporting us! Again, we are a new and growing festival with a limited staff, so your consideration is very much appreciated.
Happy submitting! :~)
