Quotes & Sayings About Film Festivals

To get noticed, I had to take my films in a space which was much more democratic in terms of cinema - the international film festivals. — Anurag Kashyap

When you go to a film festival as an audience member, it's so much fun. But when you bring your own film there, you carry so much stress and excitement. — Mora Stephens

Before YouTube, I used to show videos at film festivals, and that was good and constructive. Watching things with an audience is a great way to gauge - it's pretty clear what's working in comedy when there's a joke and people laugh or don't laugh. — Jason Woliner

A lot of movies are made, but because they come to film festivals and your movie doesn't get bought by a studio or a distributor, your movie doesn't get seen. — Michael Angarano

Remember when movies were just good or bad, before auteurs, film festivals, and guys from USC who were the first to shoot underwater? — Mort Sahl

Ever since I've left, I've been doing nothing but this film and traveling, promoting and doing festivals. So the good thing is that I'm not sitting around pining over whether I made the right choice in leaving. I'm moving and grooving. — Eriq La Salle

My hat's off to documentary filmmakers. I don't know if I'm ever going back to it. You're treated like a second-class citizen at most film festivals. You take the bus while everybody else is flown first-class. If you're a feature film director, you're put in a five-star hotel, and if you're a documentary director, you stay in a Motel 6. — Terry Zwigoff

The quality and success of Disney was actually bad for us animators because everyone on the planet thought that animation was only for kids and only in a certain domain. The big film festivals never thought much about animated films. — Michel Ocelot

Nowadays, a critic has to watch 700, 800 films a year, and I know through experience, being a juror in prestigious film festivals where supposedly the best films are arriving, from twenty films maybe you see two that are good, one that is so-so, and one that is extraordinary. And the other sixteen are terrible. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

That incredible bubble and high expectations built at festivals can work against a film. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

If you go to a film festival and watch a bunch of features and then watch a bunch of shorts, you will almost always find that the shorts are where people are taking more risks and pushing more boundaries ... simply because they have much less to lose. — Don Hertzfeldt

As a screenwriter, there's so many layers you have to go through in order to tell your story. You have to write the script, get money for the script, shoot it, find distributors, make it into film festivals, all of that just to get to your audience. — Morley

I think certain filmmakers going into Sundance or other big festivals should consider screening more for press and tastemakers before the festival. The traditional wisdom has always been the opposite: to not screen for anyone prior, let your film be seen by an audience, and generate the buzz from there. — Thom Powers

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide. — Keanu Reeves

I'm used to promoting books, but a movie is a very different thing. You have to go to film festivals and wear fancy clothes and try and look glamorous and intelligent when you're just terrified and you want to go home! — Tatiana De Rosnay

I watch many, many, many independent films every year that you see once in a film festival and they're never heard of ever again. Many of them are very, very good. — Karen Allen

Film festivals are a great vehicle for gaining an audience for your film, for exposure for the talent in the film and for the film makers to leverage opportunities for their films. I love the energy that film festivals bring. — Jamie Hector

I first visited the Toronto fest in 1979, its fourth edition, when it was known as the Festival of Festivals and had an audience of about 40,000. I happily returned to the 10-day skein nearly every year thereafter, as attendance swelled to 400,000 and it grew into the most influential film festival in North America, perhaps the world. — Richard Corliss

Toronto Film Festival is one of those festivals where there are 400 movies, and unless you have a distributor who is super confident and puts a lot of money into it, sometimes movies can go unwatched or unnoticed. — Viggo Mortensen

If you get to bring a little movie on the festival circuit, it's a nice experience because you get to see it with an audience. People who go to festivals to watch films are usually a little more eager to enjoy them. It's exciting because it's like you're going to the film's opening night at every festival. — Dito Montiel

I am not a regular at film festivals. — Lillete Dubey

Flora had not seemed to mind the excessive amount of time their parents demanded from them, which had meant that he could spend more time in his room working on his model houses and less time downstairs in the den, fidgeting through one of his father's interminable Ozu film festivals. — Hanya Yanagihara

I'd rather just help people with my creative energy. I want to remind them that they're cosmic light inside physical forms and they're an incredibly special part of god's wild mind of love, but I'd love to do that in the form of playing at venues or showing a film at festivals. — Giuseppe Andrews

What's great about the Sundance Film Festival is the festival takes over that town as it's intended to do. But, it's very focused on a lot of other filmmakers and distributors so it almost feels like, while they're a lot of so-called civilians there, it's an opportunity that you have to see, to show your stuff to the other folks, your peers really, and to get that reaction. — Alex Gibney

The irony of a director going to film festivals is you never get to see any of the films. — Tom Hooper

When you're battling against the minds of the studios and the money that can go into promoting larger budget films, it's very hard for a very small-budget Australian film to get a look in. You can get critically acclaimed and go to various film festivals around the world, but that doesn't necessarily mean the majority of people are going to hear about it. — Hugo Weaving

Doing that, then doing a lot of theater, which I love. Doing guest stars, did two independent films that are going around to all these festivals. Both of them are going to be at the Lake Tahoe Film Festival. — Austin Peck

Truth is, generally I like film festivals; somewhere at some level there's an exchange of ideas. — Willem Dafoe

On one occasion, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons and myself were due to appear at the Sarajevo film festival and were turned off a UN plane on orders from Geneva. We had to get local journalists to transport the films in for us. I tell you this only to demonstrate that festivals can be a lifeline. But, after all the difficulties I'd had in getting there, in 1996 I found myself being flown in on a four-seater RAF plane as an official guest, endorsed by the British Embassy. Ironically, the film I was to present was Mission: Impossible. — Vanessa Redgrave

In India, there is a psychological problem that movies going to film festivals are boring. It is a problem with exhibitors. — Anurag Kashyap

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. — Roger Ebert

It's a very strange experience to watch yourself in a movie anyway. I most frequently don't do it, but if I was going to do it, I would do it in a private way, not at a public screening at a film festival, which is just an overwhelming experience. — Jesse Eisenberg

A lot of the young people make beautiful films or big films or are able to finance them, but they can't get anyone to distribute them, they can't get anyone to see them, so they go to these thousands of film festivals. So I still believe that even though a young kid might be able to make a masterpiece or something that changes the direction of cinema, the issue of how to get it to people is still not solved. — Francis Ford Coppola

It's great to meet people in a setting where it's really conducive to hanging out and having
fun. Most film festivals are really low-stress, and good times to hang out with buddies and talk about what you're working on and come up with new ideas. — Joe Swanberg

The reality is that we have all these awards and all these festivals that give out awards, so you sort of go, 'okay, well, people liked the film, and I think it's a good film, and it's up for an award - well, I guess it should win the award then.' — Guy Pearce

After that really, I spent the majority of the spring going to tons and tons of regional festivals throughout America. Every corner of the country, I took the movie to twenty film festivals or something to that extent. I've lost track. Probably done Q&As 40-50 times at this point. It's always hard to watch something I've made, but I've got a little more objectivity and kind of see the film as not just an extension of myself. — James Ponsoldt

I love festivals because I feel like I'm more of a movie fan than a person who's in the film industry. — Melanie Lynskey

Salma and I had run into each other once or twice at film festivals because I was doing the press for Real Women Have Curves at the same time she was doing the press for Frida. She had seen Real Women Have Curves, and when the idea of Ugly Betty came up, she thought of me. Her enthusiasm about the project was so infectious-she spoke of it with such expectation. Everyone that was involved was really excited about the project. I really wanted to be a part of it. — America Ferrera

It feels so good to be able to be part of an action flick like 'The Raid' and to read the rave reviews in a number of film festivals. — Joe Taslim

I started doing independent films. My first one was 'Miss Bala,' which was very well-received at film festivals. — Stephanie Sigman

In starting to learn about film festivals and what were good ones - 'cause there are five billion of them - it was just a really good East Coast festival. And I thought this little movie was an East Coast film. — Andrew McCarthy

Film schools are now nearly 50-50 male-female, and women are also well represented at festivals and in indie film. But what happens to them after they direct their first film or short? Where do they go? They certainly aren't being given the same opportunities as their male counterparts. — Lesli Linka Glatter

The kind of sleep that I had during my own film [Certified Copy] screening in Cannes is different. It's not because of the specificity of the film. It was because of my relationship as an author to this film. Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them. Whereas this time, I didn't have that responsibility on my shoulders. — Abbas Kiarostami

They wish the church could be more diverse, but then leave to meet in a coffee shop with other well-educated thirtysomethings who are into film festivals, NPR, and carbon offsets. — Kevin DeYoung

I started with commercials - for shampoo, pancakes, insurance, Volvo. I did a Lux soap commercial with Sarah Jessica Parker. And I got a role in an indie film called 'Satellite' that did well in festivals. — Stephanie Szostak

I get invited to many more literary festivals than I used to because I'm associated with 'Slumdog Millionaire,' the brand. Many more doors have opened up for me as a result of the global success of the film, although I believe that I'm the same person that existed before it. — Vikas Swarup

It's a reality of film festivals that you can't see everything. You're dividing your time between seeing films and utilizing that unique space to have meetings with people that you can't otherwise. — Thom Powers

I'm happy that my films were discovered by chance by foreign film festivals. That makes me realise more that there is a world outside Japan too. For me, it's an occasion to meet many people and to experience directly the response of international audiences to my films. But for me as a director, my attitude towards making films hasn't changed with the fame. I feel it's not good to change as a person anyway — Takashi Miike

Before my commercial success, I had difficulty doing what I wanted, but my sincere short films always won prizes in festivals. So I was ready for larger successes. — Michel Ocelot

Still, as much as I wish Ballistic Kiss could be a better film, the recognition it gained from critics and at festivals speaks for itself. — Donnie Yen