Winter 2025 Edition | March 20th & 21st at 7:00pm | 3475 Rue Peel

Twelve Vacancies Film Festival is a non-profit, student-run experimental and horror short film festival based at McGill University. Our mission is to create a platform for emerging youth filmmakers to share their work, and to strengthen the McGill and greater Montreal community through meaningful engagement with art. Twelve Vacancies Film Festival was founded in 2023 in collaboration with The Veg Magazine.

TVFF is interested in screening visually innovative horror and experimental short films under ten minutes long, with the goal of showcasing a range of mediums.

Our programming is decided by a student jury, who select twelve short films for our screening. Films are selected from filmmakers who are either under 25 years old or are students.

OUR SCREENINGS:

Our short film selections are screened at 3475 Peel St, Montreal, QC, Canada, with festivals occurring twice annually. The building is located on the McGill downtown campus. To find us, walk north-west up Peel St from Sherbrooke St and look for the building on the right side of the street.

The twelve short films at our screening are presented back to back, and our events last approximately 1hr 30mins with a 10 minute intermission in between. We serve free popcorn, sell stickers, and have an audience choice award determined by a vote. Attending filmmakers will receive free admission to the festival, free festival merch, and in some cases can be connected to magazines and newspapers for interviews.

FAN FAVOURITE:
Voted on by our amazing audience, the Fan Favourite award is given to the most loved film of the season, and will be announced on our social media following the screening event.

Previously awarded to:
Fall 2024 - "Play Along" directed by Esandi Amarakoon
Winter 2024 - "Swaddle" directed by Pepi Eirew

**NEW** JURY'S AWARD:
Presented to an outstanding short film that is aesthetically, narratively, and thematically innovative, embodying the values of TVFF.

In order to be considered, submissions must:

1) be made by a student or youth under 25 years old in Canada
2) be under 10 minutes (including titles and credits),
3) be your own original video (video you shot yourself) or that you have permission to use,
4) have original music or music you have permission from the artist to use,
5) be in English or with English subtitles
6) fit under the general themes of uncanny / experimental / horror in some way

** if possible, please upload your film as a downloadable Vimeo file or email us at twelvevacanciesfilmfest@gmail.com **

Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Sidonie Auclair-Gendron

    Thank you Twelve Vacancies for screening my film! The attending experience was very nice and the selection of films was diverse and interesting :)

    December 2024
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    Response from festival:

    Thanks so much for coming Sidonie!

  • Nevin Louie

    What an awesome experience! The Twelve Vacancies team are a passionate group who've been working hard for a few years now to make a memorable night to celebrate experimental youth filmmaking. The small setting is filled with love --- from free popcorn, beautiful holographic event stickers, "4 favourite films" interviews, and more. Overall, it's a really welcoming space and it was a blast to watch the amazing curation of films this year, and an honour to have mine screen as well. They also took the time to put our films on Letterboxd and made an awesome print program with each film's description and director's bios. Don't sleep on the Twelve Vacancies! Thank you guys for all the hard work! See you next year ;).

    November 2024
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    Response from festival:

    Thank you so much Nevin! It was so great to have you there and screen your films!!