Real To Reel is a festival with an unconventional format—six weekends of documentary film programming, debuting October-November 2025. The festival launches Documentary Southeast, a new nonprofit presenting documentary film and photography, at Mars Landing Galleries, in Mars Hill, NC.

We're open to work dating from the 1960s to the present day, though we're particularly keen to show work with contemporary social, political and cultural relevance.

Seating is capped at 80, but each film will receive three screenings over one weekend.

Rules & Terms

The work we plan to show primarily, though not exclusively, either focuses on themes/issues/events relevant to the nine states representing the American Southeast or work created by artists of this region (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia).

We plan to pair short documentaries (up to 25 minutes) with longer films in programs receiving three screenings—Friday and Saturday evenings, with a Sunday pay-what-you-can matinee.

Ideally, we would arrange for the filmmakers whose works we're screening to be here to take part in interviews in front of our audience and hold a documentary-making workshop with students of Mars Hill University.

For our inaugural year, we are waiving screening fees for all submissions through Our deadline (June 27. 2025).