About Us

The Santa Barbara International Movie Awards is a seasonal online film event dedicated to showcasing outstanding cinema from around the world. Our program emphasizes excellence in performance, cinematography, sound design and score, and editing—celebrating films where craft and artistic vision take center stage.

We accept short and feature-length films across documentary, animation, live-action, and narrative categories. There are no restrictions on when or where a film was produced, provided it is suitable for a general audience rating.

If you have a compelling live-action or animated short film, we warmly invite you to submit your work for consideration and to be part of our seasonal online showcase.

Awards & Prizes

Categories :

Santa Barbara International Movie Awards will recognize the best shorts and features working in their genres:
Best Short Film
Best Feature Film
Best Experimental Film
Best Animation
Best Student Film
Best First Time Filmmaker
Best Short Documentary
Best Script
Best Unproduced Script
Best Editing
Best Film Score
Best Sci-Fi
Best Horror
Best Comedy
Best Music Video
Best T.V Series
Best Virtual Reality
Best Director
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Cinematography
Best Micro Films
Best Music Video
Best Original Score
Best LGBT Film
Best Women Empowerment Film

Rules & Terms

Rules & Terms
1. We require a vimeo or YouTube or FilmFreeway digital screening link. We don't accept DVDs
2. We don't have any prior screening or première requirements
3. Please include English subtitles for non-English films. We won't consider other language films without English subtitles
4. Duration of a short film should be less than or equal to 50 minutes
5. Once we notify the official winners, they can let us know if we can post the film for public viewing in our website.

Screenplay Contest
1. We accept short film screenplays with up to 20 pages in length
2. Screenplays should be properly written adhering to proper screenwriting format
3. We will read the screenplays submitted only for the purposes of this contest and will not share with anyone outside our festival team without your permission.
97 Reviews
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  • Duo 84 Productions

    Super festival ! Content de notre prix et un grand merci à vous ! Je recommande vraiment ce festival !

    February 2026
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  • Christopher C. James

    We are thrilled to have our short doc Omelettes for Yummies (2025) as a Semi-Finalist in the Santa Barbara International Movie Awards!

    February 2026
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  • Sergio SPAGNOL

    Great festival! I was happy to participate and have my film selected. Success to all!

    January 2026
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  • gilbert sommerville

    Thank you so much for selecting our short DISCUSSION-STARTER film, "WHY?" to be a semi-finalist. We appreciate this opportunity

    January 2026
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  • Sydney Rincón

    On behalf of the cast and crew of Sensus Mori (2025), we thank Santa Barbara International Movie Awards for the opportunity to showcase our film to bright new audiences and share our story in new collaborative spaces.

    December 2025
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