Saturn Returns Film Festival is a festival dedicated to elevating, amplifying and celebrating women’s voices, experiences and successes.
We honour the female voice and showcase fantastic female filmmaking.
Saturn Returns is a festival created and curated by an industry professionals currently working in the field. Our judges are actors, casting directors, DOPs, producers and writers who are as excited about seeing your work as sharing their own experiences so this festival is a little bit different.
We have the endorsement and input of many industry professionals, invested and passionate about providing support, feedback and expertise to all our contributors. We will have panels – covering everything from funding and scriptwriting to casting and editing - aimed at sharing the knowledge.

Awards & Prizes

We have a festival launch party on Wednesday 20th September 2023 and a Gala Award ceremony on closing night - Saturday 23rd September.
Gala Closing night will be attended by sponsors, industry professionals and guest speakers.
A great chance to mingle, network and show off your work and your prizes.

Rules & Terms

Qualified films must be a quality, completed film AND have at least two women in a key creative behind the scenes role (e.g. Writer, Producer, Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Composer or other significant behind the scenes role).

Rules :

1. All films must be directed or written or produced by a woman or gender nonconforming filmmaker.
Films by anyone are accepted if at least two of the main roles (director, writer, producer) is led by a woman or gender nonconforming filmmaker.

2. All rights to the film must be owned by the filmmakers and cleared.
Music and archive footage is your responsibility.

3. If your film is not in the English language, English subtitles will be required.

4. As a new festival striving for equality and accessibility in the film industry, we ask that you kindly provide CC on all films to accommodate to disabled or D/deaf audience members and members of our team.
You can submit your film without CC, but we ask that if you are selected, they must be added before the screening.

5. Films must have been completed after January 2019.

7. Films that do not fall into the above criteria will not be watched or considered, so please do ensure you read and follow guidelines.

8. We do not refund submissions or offer waiver codes.

9. We are so sorry but are are unable to provide feedback on submissions as we are run by volunteers.

10. The most important rule: ENJOY yourselves and good luck!