Student Art Festival [STARTFEST] is a nonprofit film festival helping educate, exhibit and recognize the achievements of aspiring high school and college students. [STARTFEST] is the ONLY film festival where students compete against their peers and receive valuable, constructive feedback on their work from leading industry professionals.

Awards & Prizes

Best High School
Best High School (Runner Up)
Best High School (3rd Place)
Best College
Best College (Runner Up)
Best College (3rd Place)

Rules & Terms

Student currently enrolled in a secondary or post-secondary educational institution are welcome to participate in STARTFEST.

Basically anything you create is accepted into STARTFEST. We have divided the competition into seven categories:

PSV (Public Service Video)
News/Sports Package
Narrative Short
Animation
Documentary
Experimental
Music Video

LEGALLY your submission must be an original work created by you, and your fellow students, in its entirety. Meaning any copy-written, or protected material such as music, logos, artwork etc. is prohibited UNLESS you can provide paperwork stating permission for use.
2 Reviews
Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Paulo Carneiro

    i was thinking that the festival never happened...

    May 2016
    Helpful
  • Jorge Blanco

    It was very sad. The bad organization of the Festival was for sure. The event was not celebrated the day they said, but much much later. The communication was terrible. There was a censorship for everybody who protests in the social networks. And finaly the most part of the official selections were not projected in the event (mine´s included), so all the young and student filmmakers suffered needlessly.

    May 2016
    Helpful
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    Response from festival:

    Hello Jorge,
    I'm sorry to hear of your experience with our festival and apologize for any inconvenience. As we've posted on our social media, we have reevaluated our approach to which films are accepted into our festival. Because of the zero entry fee policy of last season, we received over 1200 entries from around the world! We were very excited, but completely overwhelmed due to our very small all volunteer staff. Our goal up to that season was to screen every film submitted, which we had done the 2 season's prior and had announced as such for this season as well. Unfortunately this would not be possible; however, we've held out hope to get the remaining films screened at other venues and continue to pursue this option. Again, I apologize if this was not clear in our social media posts. We do not censor family appropriate posts and our communication response rate on our facebook page is less than 48 hours. Please understand our situation and accept my sincerest apologies.

    Kyle Snavely
    President - STARTFEST