Before any filmmaker starts submitting their project into festivals, they have to prepare for one very possible outcome. “You need to get really good at being rejected,” says Rudi Womack, the executive director of the Wyoming International Film Festival. “You are going to be rejected 10 times as much as you are accepted.”
On average, the acceptance rate for film festivals is just 13%, according to the Short Movie Club. If you’re submitting to the most popular festivals in the world, that number dips to below 1%, as those events are picking from thousands upon thousands of submissions. But what strategies can filmmakers deploy to handle such rejection? And what lessons can they learn from being spurned in order to take their careers to the next level?
Getting comfortable with rejection
Tempering expectations ahead of submitting is helpful for filmmakers, says Drea Clark, an independent producer and festival programmer. “It’s OK aiming for major festivals if you know they’re a long shot. Having a good idea of what is achievable for your film is very important,” she says. “Otherwise, you will think that you’ve failed and that the industry has failed you. It’s hard to move forward and keep creating if you think that’s true.”
When face-to-face with a rejection letter, filmmaker Noam Kroll allows himself to sit with the disappointment. “But eventually it passes. You move on to the next festival. You adjust your tactics. It’s a learning process,” he says.
What’s of the utmost importance is that you don’t completely lose faith in your project. “It’s easy to be dependent on external validation from festivals, as there’s this impression that they’re the tastemakers in the industry,” says documentarian Nick August-Perna. After his 2023 documentary “Tell Them You Love Me” was turned down by several festivals, August-Perna turned to meditation to help him deal with the disappointment. “I thought I had made my magnum opus. But it was getting rejected, and I just had to deal with that. You have to do whatever it takes psychologically and spiritually to become comfortable.”
When writer-director Adam Salky’s short films were repeatedly declined from festivals, he decided to embrace the topsy-turvy nature of the filmmaking profession. “Rejection from one festival just means that your work is going to take a different avenue. You’d be surprised, too. Six months down the road, your film might have got into the festival that was right for it,” he says. And, as he points out, many programmers work for multiple festivals throughout the year and regularly remember projects that they originally couldn’t find space for.
Meanwhile, Kroll offers the reminder that getting into a festival isn’t the only metric of success for a film. “[Not getting in] doesn’t mean that your film is going to be any less successful than films that did get in,” he says. “There’s often a huge disconnect between success on the festival circuit and success commercially. There should be no correlation in your mind between getting into a festival and whether or not your film is good.”
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Why you didn’t make the cut
There are numerous factors, beyond the quality of the final product, that determine why films get turned down by festivals. “I have to reject some of my favorite films that get submitted because we can’t find a spot for them; [or] sometimes there’s politics involved and they might offend sponsors of the festival or even the state,” says Womack. August-Perna reveals that he was told “Tell Them You Love Me” was rejected from a major film festival because of the controversy surrounding a documentary from the year prior.
For Salky, when it came to submitting short films, he made sure his final edits were as condensed as possible, as he noticed that it was hard for festivals to find space for anything over 12 minutes. “A festival programmer could program three shorter films during that time,” he explains. “So your film has to be better than theirs.” August-Perna adds that festivals are always looking for a diverse program of films: “Not just in the sense of identity, but also different types of films. They might already have three depressing films, and want something lighter.”
While Kroll calls playing the festival game a lottery, he acknowledges that there are ways for filmmakers to optimize their chances of success. “If there are no-name actors in your movie, most of the big festivals aren’t really going to consider your film,” he says. “Programming decisions get very political and genuinely have nothing to do with the quality of the film. If it has a well-known director, director of photography, producer, actor, or agency involved, it’s a no-brainer for the festival to include it.”
Implementing feedback
Unfortunately, most of the time that a film is rejected, the festival provides only a brief letter that doesn’t go into specifics about why it wasn’t chosen. If a film was particularly close to being accepted, but was just pipped by another entry, sometimes a festival will contact the filmmaker to insist their movie was liked, explain just how close they were to making the cut, and expound upon why it was rejected.
One festival that has garnered a strong reputation for providing feedback is the Cleveland International Film Festival, which Womack describes as the “gold standard [for] giving feedback to rejected filmmakers.” She advises reaching out directly to festivals and asking for information; that way, directors can see if there are any “commonalities between the festivals” that turned them down.
Womack also recommends taking another look at your film if it hasn’t had the expected reception. A lot of festivals take months to respond to submissions, and during this time, filmmakers have usually learned or honed new skills behind the camera. While you won’t be able to resubmit your project to a festival that has rejected it, taking a more objective look at your film will help with future submissions to different festivals. “You might go back, look at the film, and see where you can tighten it up. That happens a lot,” he says.
Salky says that completing a film and entering into a festival is a milestone for any filmmaker, regardless of where it is accepted: “Every filmmaker wants their film to play great at festivals, win awards, and open up the door to a career. But the reality is much more complex. Short films are a way to grow as a filmmaker and are still a step along the way to becoming the artist you’re meant to be.”
Learning and growing from rejection
There are many different ways to confront being rejected by a film festival. As Salky’s rejections piled up, he took inspiration from Stephen King. In his memoir “On Writing,” the iconic novelist behind “The Shining” and “Carrie” revealed that he pinned up each of his rejection letters as a reminder of the persistence required to succeed as a writer. “I try hard not to take it personally,” Salky says. “I keep all my rejection letters in a folder and use them as fuel to keep going. Every filmmaker has had to deal with rejection at some point.”
Kroll insists that being rejected from festivals helped him to learn “gratitude and patience.” He credits it with humbling him, which proved to be “very valuable going forward.” Now, he’s taking control of his own destiny. Kroll had initially dreamt of impressing the powers that be at film festivals with his work and immediately scoring a distribution or studio deal. But when he spoke to filmmakers who actually did become the toast of the town after a fest, he learned that the reality was much different.
He explains, “They’d get an agent, then go on a water bottle tour,” which is essentially when new filmmakers go around Hollywood meeting producers and executives to discuss potentially working together in the future. This process can sometimes kick-start careers, but most of the time, filmmakers just end up having a cordial chat about projects that never see the light of day. “After a few years they still wouldn’t have made anything,” Kroll says. “It didn’t actually help them further their goals.”
Over the years, Kroll has instead focused his attention on making self-funded DIY films, which have increasingly gotten larger in scope. “A lot of the success I’ve had has had nothing to do with film festivals,” he shares. Instead, he’s used whatever methods he has to self-release and distribute his films. When he puts them online, he reads through all of the honest feedback, most of which is from strangers, to improve his work. “The question of how you learn and grow from festivals is really: How do you learn and grow as a filmmaker?” he says. “You need to make your film, find your audience, then listen and learn from them. There is no one path to becoming a director.”
