SUBMISSIONS

AWARDS + PRIZES

• Jury Award Feature: $1,000 – 40 minutes & over
• Jury Award Short: $750 – 10-39 minutes
• Jury Award Mini-Doc: $750 – Under 10 minutes
• Audience Award: TBD – Feature
• Audience Award: TBD – Short

All films selected for SDFF 2022 are considered eligible for competition except those titles curated and invited for special programs.

RULES + TERMS

If accepted for the program, your film will screen March 24 – 27, 2022 at the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival.

Films of any completion date are eligible for submission. However, accepted films must not have been shown commercially anywhere in Northern California* within 60 days prior to the festival.

*Excludes films curated for special programs 

Films Must be submitted via Film Freeway and its video player.

Submission fees are non-refundable. We are sensitive to this issue and keep our fees low. They offset a portion of our administrative costs in bringing you and your audience together.

Passwords must not be changed until submissions have closed and notification of program films is announced.

We do not accept rough cuts, subsequent cuts or more complete versions of submitted films, therefore changing or updating the originally submitted link is not permitted.

Each accepted film may be screened more than once during the Festival. Programming is at the discretion of SDFF.

Exhibition Formats:

SDFF has multiple screening venues. Some require DCP; others do not.

You will be informed of the required screening format when the program is locked.

Acceptable exhibition formats are QuickTime or ProRes files which can be delivered as a download link or mailed to SDFF on a SD card, flash drive or hard drive.

Foreign language films must be made available with English subtitles.

By entering your film, you agree to provide compatible exhibition format(s) at least 30 days before the start date of the festival to give SDFF print traffic manager time to QC your doc.
Before sending your media, please verify that your film plays correctly. Do not include menus, trailers and other special features.

SDFF will not pay shipping costs to or from the festival. If you want your materials returned or shipped on to another address, please provide postage with your addressed shipping container. Put the title of your film on all shipping materials.

All films selected for SDFF 2022 are considered eligible for competition except those titles curated and invited for special programs.

Communication:

Each entry needs to include the following contact information:

– Director: Full name, email address, phone number, postal mailing address
– Rights Holder [if different]: Company name; Contact name, email address, phone number, postal mailing address
– Distributor Contact: Company name, Contact Name, email address, department, phone number, postal mailing address.

You are responsible for updating SDFF directly regarding any change to your contact information and ensuring that emails from programming@sebastopolfilm.org are not blocked by spam filters.

Additional Terms of Entry:

By submitting this documentary, I understand that I am agreeing to the following:

I own or control the copyright and am duly authorized to submit this film to Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival 2022. Should ownership or rights to my film change, this agreement to screen at the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival 2022, will be honored, upheld and not be infringed.

If accepted, I will not withdraw my film from SDFF 2022. Upon selection for screening at SDFF 2022 up to two minutes of footage from the film and materials accompanying my entry may be used for promotional purposes.

Deadlines:

All entry deadlines are postmark deadlines. Entries postmarked after the final deadline might not be considered.