Founded in 2004, The Lake County Film Festival is a multi-venue, multi-weekend Film Festival located in Lake County, IL. The bulk of the festival takes place at the College Of Lake County in Grayslake, IL, but we also have screenings at the Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest, IL, and have had events at over a dozen other locations over the decades.

Lake County, IL has a population of over 700,000, and they are desperately underserved in the area of independent cinema. The LCFF remains the only multi-year film festival in the area. Our patrons are engaged, eager, and excited to watch films from independent filmmakers across all different genres and walks of life. We are known for our in-depth post-film Q&A's, and we've been told multiple times from filmmakers that their Q&A's here were the best they've had.

The festival prides itself on providing a platform for a diverse group of filmmakers. From sex to race to genre: the Lake County Film Festival has stories for everybody. We strive for gender parity in our slate, and we crave more work from diverse voices.

We are proud of our history showing the early work of filmmakers like Mike Flannagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep), Chad Hartigan (Morris From America, This Is Martin Bonner), Alex Karpovsky (Girls), and Leah Meyerhoff (I Believe In Unicorns, Film Fatales), but we're also incredibly proud of all the great films we've shown by people that haven't achieved the same level of recognition. It is one of our great pleasures to present films that recently screened at some of the countries' largest film festivals side by side with films that were made by people with their daughters over the weekend.

2024 is expected to be about the same size as the last few years, with a couple dozen feature films and 80-100 short films selected for exhibition and in competition for both audience and jury awards.

We love independent movies, and we want to see your film, so submit to us!

Awards & Prizes

We generally give out Audience Awards for Best Features (one for Documentary & one for Narrative), and publish a list of the top 10 highest rated short films, of which we highlight the best overall short, as well as documentary short, animated short and others.

Our industry juries usually pick a favorite feature for narrative, documentary & music-related films. Occasionally the select a runner-up, or highlight something like a favorite actor or other element they feel worth highlighting.

Our narrative shorts jury selects an overall short as their favorite, but also generally has 5-10 awards they can give out, for any designation they choose.

Our hosting sponsor, The College Of Lake County, offers two prizes of $250 each to the two winners of the student short film competition. One for best documentary short, and one for best narrative short.

Rules & Terms

• 40 minutes is our cut off point between shorts and features.

• We do not have screening premiere requirements at this time. We do greatly prefer to show films not available for free streaming, but occasionally makes exceptions, usually for short films. Please let us know via cover letter, or when accepted, if your film will be available at the time of the festival.

• When you submit a film, you should be authorized to submit this film for screening at the 2024 Lake County Film Festival. Each film is shown 2 - 4 times. You grant the Lake County Film Festival the nonexclusive right to use submitted materials in connection with any and all publicity and promotional materials regarding the festival. They warrant that the submitted film does not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of any person or entity and agree to hold harmless and fully indemnify and defend the Lake County Film Festival and its representatives against any and all claims made for such infringement or any other violations of law. They also acknowledge that the film submission fee does not guarantee acceptance and no refund will be provided if your film is not selected.

56 Reviews
Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Sam Slowik

    It was a nicely run film festival. There were plenty of rooms and screens to choose from and many films to watch.

    January 2025
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  • Norbert Miśkiewicz

    The Lake County Film Festival was a tremendous honor for us, even though we couldn’t attend in person. Having our film selected brought us great joy and was proof that our work was recognized on an international stage. Although we weren’t able to participate in person, we felt like part of this exceptional event and are grateful for the opportunity to showcase our film to a wide audience.

    December 2024
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  • Aidan Culver

    It was an amazing time and I am very thankful to have been given the opportunity!

    November 2024
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  • Festival Formula

    It's always a joy when we find a festival that cares about the curation from the word go, making sure the puzzle pieces these films are play nice and thematically with each other. Nat does this with great ease (🦝). We were delighted to have 10 clients screen in 2024:

    🎬 A Time Apart
    🎬 Afterschool
    🎬 Bored Games
    🎬 Hair
    🎬 Happy Death Day
    🎬 Hello?
    🎬 My Dreams Have Been Dark Of Late
    🎬 Night Milk
    🎬 Rodent
    🎬 The Unseen

    November 2024
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  • Maria Sterr

    Lots of good communication and awesome films! I also appreciate how they had a q and a after my film, 'A Trip to Somewhere Else' was shown.

    November 2024
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