The Sappho Film Festival is the most prestigious and upcoming LGBTQ+ film festival in the UK, with its key focus on diversity within the community and exploring films made by, for and about the LGBT community.

We look for films and filmmakers that are focussed on women, LGBT+ and BIPoC subjects.

Our goal is to give a platform to the best LGBT films that highlight new and established filmmakers, providing a network and community for everybody.

We are an online event due to the condition of lockdown in the world & the UK right now. We are currently non-profit, and all proceeds go towards funding the festival & marketing in order to help our nominees get the best of the best achievements & recognition.

Outline of Festival:

Since we are in our first running of the festival, our aim is on community and networking. At the start of the festival will for each category, then slowly by our LGBT+ & diverse panel of judges will select the films, then select the nominations, and release this publicly on our website & Instagram.

Our event is hosted at Paynes Plots, in the UK. It is a small outside location, suited for a large outdoor, in which we would screen all of our selections and announce the award winners. However, due to covid-19 and the lockdown in the UK, mixed with the dates this event is hosted, we are having to host the first event online. The event will be held live on our website through Youtube.

Awards & Prizes

Our main Awards are for Best Short Film, Best Documentary, Best International Film & Best Student Film.

We also offer Craft Awards for Best Directing, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Editing, Best Sound & and overall Best Creative Filmmaking.

We also offer specific categories for filmmakers, that are there to help boost the representation and work of diverse filmmakers who might usually be excluded from film festivals. Here at Sappho Film Festival, we are the opposite.

Our specific filmmaker categories for Award submission are BIPoC filmmakers, LGBT filmmakers and Disabled/Neurodiverse filmmakers. Each category will win an award for their category & be awarded an area of filmmaking craft they have excelled at.

Rules & Terms

If submitting to Sappho Film Festival, your film must have an LGBT+ theme or story featured. If you submit without reaching this criterion you will be disqualified. We do have a category for Non-LGBT films, please select this if this fits your film more.

Rules
1 - Film MUST feature an LGBT+ Plot, Theme or Story.

2 - We prefer videos uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo to be unlisted/private, not public.

3 - If you are applying for any of the Specific Filmmaker Categories, you MUST include a cover letter & director testimony.

4 - You can not submit to Best Short Film and any LGBTQ+ Categories and the Non-LGBT category. This is a direct violation and will lead to being disqualified.

General Rules
1 - In order to submit a film, you must own the rights or have permission from the owner.

2 - The Festival relationship will exclusively be related to the film submitter.

3 - Any Foreign film that is not in English, must have English subtitles.

4 - All fees are non-refundable.

5 - Students must present a valid Student ID in order to apply for the Student Award.

6 - We will disqualify any films if the festival considers the content inappropriate.

7 - Filmmakers can submit in multiple categories. (Our Team may suggest the categories that are more suitable for the film to apply.)

8 - The applicants (submitters) must accept the Sapphic Film Festival Rules and Terms.

9 - All submissions in filmmakers categories require the name of the person and the category. We require a cover letter from the director explaining how their identity influenced their filmmaking and their time in the industry.

10 - Submitting your movie, you authorize Sapphic Film Festival to use, distribute and share the film poster, trailer, synopsis and movie stills on our social media. Due to a last-minute change of our venue (covid-19 related). We are now having to host our festival online using our website and YouTube. All submitters consent to this upon submitting to the festival.

11 - Have some lovely films to submit!
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  • Natalie Williams

    Sappho Film Festival May 12, 2021

    I am honored by the designation of Honorable Mention at the United Kingdom’s Sappho Film Festival! My belief that women around the world are literally dying to see the example of women’s empowerment expressed in the filming of “MichFest 1999” has been confirmed.

    I am also thankful for the opportunity for the film to be seen publicly, at a film festival - 22 years after the event occurred. The ‘24th Michigan Women’s Music Festival 1999’ documentary speaks to the visionary potential of separatist feminist spaces. The Sappho film festival serves in that capacity as well.

    I, the editors at Dyke TV, and the participants in the documentary are proud of the recognition. I can only hope that Sappho herself would have been be pleased.

    Natalie Williams
    DykeTVnet@gmail.com

    May 2021
    Helpful
  • Rod Sáez Chávez

    we loved the experience

    thank you

    May 2021
    Helpful