Shit in the Dirt doesn't care about imperfections - in fact, we embrace them. At our festival, we want to celebrate low-to-no-budget filmmaking by exhibiting films that appear amateurish in nature, yet are beautifully unique in their own way.

Selected films will premiere on Friday, June 21st and Saturday, June 22nd, 2024 at the Apohadion Theater in Portland, ME.

Tickets will go on sale in Spring 2024. Additional screenings will be announced as well.

Awards & Prizes

Awards include...

Best Acting
Best Animation
Most Incoherent Film
Most Coherent Film
Most Abhorrent Film
Best Editing
Best Ensemble
The "Insert Sponsorship Here" Award
RAWR XD Award - Best Performance by an Animal
The Spirit of Shit in the Dirt Award
Best Film

Rules & Terms

- Film submissions are open between the dates of February 9th and May 3rd, 2024.

- Official film submissions may be no longer than 12 minutes and no shorter than 1 second. We are ideally looking for films between 15 seconds and 8 minutes long.

- Please make sure your film is downloadable.

- Films in any language are eligible, but should be subtitled if not in English. Subtitles should be printed into the submitted film file.

- By submitting your film, you are granting Shit in the Dirt permission to use the contents of your film to be reproduced in event screenings, recorded screenings, virtual screenings, and in promotional content: with proper credit given to filmmaker.

17 Reviews
Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Remy Katz

    This festival was so welcoming and fun! I traveled from Florida to Maine to attend, and they were so happy to have me! I was so surprised and honored that my film was selected for the Winter 2023 Most Explicit award. I would recommend this festival to anyone who loves filmmaking for the grime and dirt and making, well, s*** out of s***!

    March 2024
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  • Steven Reifsteck

    Love this place and these people

    March 2024
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  • Le Zoo Cinema

    We were not able to come at the festival when our movie aired (in june 2023) but we were really happy to part to the festival. Good branding! Thank you!

    March 2024
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  • Vincent Truman

    I'm glad some folks enjoyed the June 2023 festival. Personally, I never heard anything from anyone at the fest about it. The website seems to have a couple of pictures of 2023 but was mainly old info (the poll for audience favorite was for 2022). The twitter account was last posted in 2022.

    I'm not sure if it actually happened at all. Lesson learned.

    July 2023
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  • Matthew Bianchi

    Great festival! The venue was super cool and added to the experience. It’s definitely used for punk rock shows and things like that but is charming for a festival. The people running it were very friendly. We will absolutely submit a film to them again!

    June 2023
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