Yucca Valley Film Festival

IMPORTANT: all selected filmmakers agree to participate and present their film in person -or at least digitally -, and take part in AMA or QnAs with audience.

In case of a live event, travel and accommodation expenses are the responsibility of each filmmaker.

HOW RECENT
The film should have been completed after January 1, 2018.

LICENCE RELEASE
Submitters grant the Yucca Valley Film Festival all necessary rights, free of charge, to screen use and promote the submitted materials, for public performance, with or without entrance fee. Applicant further declares their work has taken care of all necessary permission use of any copyrighted material (e.g. music) used in their film.

ONLY FILMMAKERS PARTICIPATING IN PERSON WILL BE GRANTED THEIR PRIZE MONEY, gift bag and cash awards. Laurels and certificates are sent by email on a digital form.

GENERAL RULES
Any submission stands for a full acceptance of the Festival rules.
A withdrawal does not void the fact a submission has been made.
Festival decisions are final.

SUBMISSION & SUBMISSION FEE
We accept all genres and nationalities and language for all international categories.
You are allowed to have multiple entries and submit to multiple categories, with the same or different films. Each category requires its own fee.
Entries are non refundable.
We do not provide free submissions.
We do not review movie submissions sent directly to us by email, unless we requested it. We only accept online digital submissions via selected platforms.
Each entry and submission category must have its own submission fee. 

If you submitted to the wrong category, contact us (there may be a fee).
Your submission grants the Festival and the Town of Yucca Valley the right to use and utilize any image, excerpt, titles, words you submitted to us, for promotion purposes.
The festival organizers may refuse any illegal, non-artistic, fake, false, incomplete entries.
The festival and the Town of Yucca Valley shall pick the submissions of their choice to create the festival program.
The festival and the Town of Yucca Valley reserve the right to cancel, change any part of the program or revert selected submissions without notice.
Each student film submitted has to provide proof of studies. If you do not provide, your entry may not make it to selection and be set to incomplete or end up disqualified.
Animated short films (even student made) must submit to animated category.
Animated features (even student made) must submit to feature category.
A documentary (even student made) must submit to the documentary category.
Works in progress are not accepted unless local work made in the Hi-Desert area and San Bernardino County.

MATERIAL
You FilmFreeway profile must include :
- your country
- a poster of your project (whether it is a film, a script, or any piece of work. You don’t have one -> We can recommend a couple of designers).
- minimum 5 lines about your project (synopsis)
- a biography of the director or the artist.
- at least 2 pictures from the film with no watermarking.
- a trailer. Your trailer will be used. Your trailer must be on YouTube OR any other platform so we can embed it to our website and to our press releases. If you have no trailer: we can recommend several editors.

If an element goes missing: contact us.

Your FilmFreeway profile must NOT include
- the type of work next to the title of your film.
Examples : “ASTONISHING CLIFF EDGE -Music Video-“ is wrong.
“THE LIFE OF JAMES I a short film by Benny Lugosi” is wrong.
“ASTONISHING CLIFF EDGE” and “THE LIFE OF JAMES” are correct.

The names, title, country and all elements you fill your FilmFreeway profile with will be used if you get selected to the festival. Fill your profile fully and careful.
ALL communications are sent to the email address you provide. The festival is not responsible for any lost communication whatsoever.

Your FilmFreeway profile must provide a direct access to your work (video, film, photo) at all times. If your film or video disappears from your profile, your submission may be set to incomplete or even disqualified, if the incident happens after the official selection.

SOCIAL
We strongly recommend you have a Facebook and/or Instagram page for your project or film so we can fully promote you.

SCREENINGS
Screenings will require a HD digital file, sent by WeTransfer Google Drive... NO DROPBOX unless direct download without signup.
Specifications : .mp4, H264. Films below 5 minutes : less than 500MO. Films 5 to 10 minutes : less than 1G. Films 10 to 30 minutes : less than 2G. Feature films : less than 5G.
NO .mov will be used.
Regarding 2K, 4K: we welcome these formats. Please send us an email to arrange good reception of the files.
It is your responsibility to provide with the proper screening file. If you do not provide, you will be disqualified.

DISQUALIFICATION, FRAUD & PLAGIARISM
If your film raises some concerns about potential or actual copyright issues, illegal copy or plagiarism, submissions may be NOT SELECTED or DISQUALIFIED without notice.
The Festival has a no tolerance policy for fraud, with regards to any form of influence toward a biased tentative outcome.

VOTE
Audience Vote take place after the screenings or block screening. Only audience members are allowed to vote for competing films.
Any identified fraud will have consequences, from cancelling the fraudulent vote to disqualifying the film.
Be it known that some participants were disqualified from the audience vote in 2020 due to vote fraud. The votes we receive are verified. Any suspicion leads to a closer examination and the festival reserve itself the right to disqualify from the votes or from the festival any movie or filmmaker that would benefit from an established biased system or any form of fraud destined to influence the results of the audience vote.

PRIZE MONEY
Prizes money are only wired to a US bank account after a W9 form is complete. NO OTHER OPTION WILL BE CONSIDERED AT THE TIME. DO NOT REQUEST ANY FORM OF EXCEPTION.

ATTENDANCE
If you are selected or win, you are expected to attend the festival and the Award Ceremony. If you cannot attend the ceremony, you must find someone to represent you and claim your award and prize money, on stage.
Only attending or represented filmmakers will be awarded, with no exceptions.
We do not ship trophies.

ACCOMMODATION & TRANSPORTATION
Is at the charge of the participating filmmaker.

SELECTION & NOTIFICATION
We may announce the first nominees before the notification date. This does not mean the selection is complete, this means we may make a first wave of selection to facilitate attendance.
When you receive the first platform update as a selected submission, that means you are selected, and you get an Official Selection Laurel. The selection does not grant a screening in every case, please check our website.
We cannot give each submitter a personal answer regarding their selection.
The selected talents receive an email with a link to the laurel center and all information about the festival.
If you're not selected, your movie status will be updated on FilmFreeway, and the platform will send an automatic notification at due date.

SCRIPTS
Accepted scripts are un-produced and produced, 2017 or later. If your film is produced, you have to send us the script, not the film.

CATEGORIES
Short Films (1 to 30 Minutes)
Feature films (31 to 150 minutes)
Documentaries (1 to 120 minutes)
Scripts (1 to 150 pages)
Animation (1 to 30 Minutes)
Student short films (1 to 30 Minutes)
Visual Art (video form, 1 to 25 Minutes)
Music Video (under 10 minutes)