The Golden Balloon Film Festival

This festival celebrates the exhilaration of a challenge without stringent time constraints. As the filmmaker, you will receive a prompt. It is a concise one sentence story. With this prompt as your starting point, you will create your own short film and/or script.

This festival is about the celebration of film and uplifting filmmakers. We want an environment of creativity and free expression. In our effort to be welcoming, all films that meet the qualification are official selections. With every film being a selection, the awards are done differently. We have all the awards split into several tiers: Bronze Tier, Silver Tier, and Golden Tier. With there being a Platinum Balloon that is “The Best in Show”. All tiers receive a laurel of that tier as well as a digital certificate. The Silver Tier will be screened based on availability. The Golden Tier receives a screening as well as official awards. These awards are different from typically done. Scripts also receive all the same awards minus being screened.

Any Golden Balloon will be given an award based on their film. We want you to feel like we actually connected with your film, and it isn’t a popularity contest. For example, a Golden Balloon might be for “This scene made me cry my eyes out.” There is no limit to what a Golden Balloon could be for. By doing this, we feel like what we give you is more than just an award. What we give you is a recognition of the uniqueness of your film.

All that being said, there does have to be one winner. This is the Platinum Balloon. There is one for film and one for script. This is a recognition that your film or script just is the best. The Platinum Balloon for film gets the final screening spot. The The Platinum Balloon for script, however, gets a live table reading.

This year’s prompt is called “knock, knock”. "It's 3 AM, and you're home alone having a terrible nightmare, when suddenly you are awoken by a knock at your door."