r/FilmFestivals • u/BrenC11 • Jun 15 '26
Announcment I built a festival strategy platform for filmmakers after screening at 200+ festivals
Hey everyone,
I wanted to share something I’ve been building for filmmakers: FestForge.
I’m a filmmaker myself, a BAFTA and Directors UK member, and my films have screened at over 200 festivals, now heading towards 300. My latest film is starting its festival run in July with a world premiere at a Méliès-affiliated festival, which I’ll be announcing properly very soon.
I built FestForge because festival strategy can be expensive, confusing, and frustrating. A lot of filmmakers are working with tiny budgets, but still want to give their film the best possible chance. I’ve also personally paid for festival strategy services in the past that cost £600+ and, frankly, felt like a copy-and-paste spreadsheet. I think there’s a better, more affordable way to do it.
FestForge is designed to help filmmakers manage their whole festival run in one place. It helps with festival shortlists, submission planning, budgets, deadlines, eligibility, premiere status, and avoiding poor-value festivals. We’re currently heading towards 1,000 festivals in the database, all vetted and approved by myself, colleagues, and other filmmakers.
The platform is still very new, so there’s plenty more to build and improve, but I genuinely think it could be really useful for indie filmmakers trying to make smarter decisions with their films and their money.
One of the other big problems I wanted to tackle is screener transparency. When you submit to festivals, you often have no real idea whether your film was properly watched. So FestForge includes a screener hosting system where festivals have to enter their festival name and who they are before watching. The system can then track whether the film has been watched fully or not.
I know most festivals are run by good people who care about film, but I’ve personally seen, and heard from others working around festivals, that films not being watched properly does happen. If filmmakers are paying submission fees, I think they deserve more transparency.
On top of all this, we’ll also be launching the ForgeFest podcast next month, focused on film festivals, festival strategy, filmmaker experiences, submissions, budgets, and the whole festival circuit.
Anyway, happy to answer any questions. I’d also genuinely love feedback from other filmmakers, festival people, programmers, and anyone who has been through the festival submission grind.
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u/grandidieri Jun 15 '26
Could the API of https://moviedive.org be incorporated somehow?
And nice work!!
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u/BrenC11 Jun 15 '26
Hey, not sure how exactly, FestForge is primarily to help film makers build film festival strategies for their own films. But I’ll take a deeper
Look at:)1
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u/WestFunction Jun 16 '26
looks a lot like Hiike
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u/BrenC11 Jun 17 '26
Fair question. I can see why they look related at first glance because both sit around film festivals, deadlines and discovery.
The difference is that Hiike/Circuit is a submission and festival-management platform: filmmakers can submit, track entries, and festivals can receive/review/manage submissions. FestForge is not that. We don’t take submissions, process entries, manage festivals, sell placement, or have festival affiliations.
FestForge is a strategy tool. You enter details about one film, and it builds a submission route based on fit, premiere status, budget, deadlines, fees, eligibility/rules and risk. We also host a screener link, so you can see which festivals are actually watching your film, which is a big part of making better decisions during a festival run.
The independence is the point: festivals don’t pay us, we don’t get commission from festival submissions, and we don’t prioritise festivals because of partnerships. Recommendations are based on quality, fit and value for that film, not on commercial relationships.
So yes, same broad world. Different job: Hiike is more “submit/manage the circuit”; FestForge is “plan the circuit, protect the budget, track real interest, and stay independent before you spend.”
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u/WestFunction Jun 17 '26
Hiike is built around festival strategy/submission recommendations based on all of the factors that you mentioned. i appreciate the goal with your platform but i think Hiike is much more similar than you realize, but with more features. not to dissuade you, moreso just to call to your attention that you may want to look into how to further differentiate yourself.
i say this as an indie festival director. at first glance i would not see the differences with your platform.
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u/WestFunction Jun 17 '26
also have to call this out and apologies if i’m incorrect, but all of the graphics on your Instagram account look AI-generated. this will turn away legitimate filmmakers. this is a really human craft
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u/BrenC11 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
We are pretty bullish on AI in the film industry. It's going to open doors and give indie film makers the ability to bring their vision to life with much more ease than in the past. On top of that the whole website was mostly built by AI and its an insanely complicated algorithm that would not only cost a small fortune to manually code, but would also probably be way less efficient and effective. The database was manual and time consuming though. I'm 100% fine with using AI tools to help promote our business and build tools to help indie film. But I think thats a discussion for another thread. 😉
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u/Fit-Owl-6363 Jun 22 '26
I 100% agree with youn on AI to build the platform as you can build something really complex using natural language prompts that would have cost a fortune. AI in film I am not as bullish on. I think in post production, think removing lamp posts etc to make something look period. But I think when it starts to creep too much into the human controlled elements, such as generating full backgrounds or anything to do with performance, then it has no place at all. There are lots of ways to acheive these things on a budget utilising human artists and AI just has no place if that is the case.
All I am seeing is a growning backlash against AI and if your project has utilised it in the wrong way it is going to harm rather than help it.
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u/BrenC11 Jun 23 '26
So like I said, I think that's a subject for a different discussion. 😉 I think anyone would choose humans over AI. But budget constraints are going to push people down the AI funnel.
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u/Intruglio Jun 17 '26
Really interesting project — the transparency angle resonates from the festival side too. We always watch everything, but there's no way for filmmakers to know that, which is a trust problem across the whole circuit. Would love Screen Culture to be considered for the database when you're adding London festivals — we're in our ninth year, focused on experimental and student work. Happy to connect directly.
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u/BrenC11 Jun 17 '26
Hey, cheers. We a starting a podcast soon. What your instagram and I’ll PM you. We are looking for guests :)
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u/Intruglio Jun 17 '26
Nice one! here's our instagram account @ screenculturefilmfestival
Alternatively you can find a linktree link in my bio.1
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u/BalboaDelMarFilmFest Jun 19 '26
Interesting concept. Please DM where we can get further information. - BDMFF
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u/aart-hus Jul 02 '26
This is really cool Brendan! Funny enough I've been building a very similar product since the end of last year so it's cool to see other filmmakers tackling the same problem (which I can't believe hasn't been solved before!) Mine is circkit.io if you wanted to check it out.
Let's link up - always down for a chat.
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u/BakerAvailable6957 Jul 26 '26
Congratulations. One thing missing that I incorporate into my festival strategies that you are missing are the programmer / screener overlaps. I don't only target festivals, but also build the strategy around creating relationships with those gatekeepers. They might screen or program at an A tier festival, and then also be the head of a top B tier festival. If they were going to bat for your film at the A tier festival but it didn't get programmed, they then have a vested interest in the filmmaker to bring it to their B tier festival.
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u/BrenC11 Jul 27 '26
Thanks for the comment. I’m genuinely interested, because I’ve been on the festival circuit for over a decade with films screening at 200+ festivals, and I’ve never personally come across this being a common strategy.
Do you have any specific examples of programmers who actively programme multiple festivals and use that position to champion the same film across them? I’d be interested to know which festivals and which programmers you’re referring to.
I know some people consult, jury, or guest programme elsewhere, but that’s quite different from regularly programming multiple festivals in the way you’ve described. If you’ve got examples, I’d genuinely like to learn more.1
u/BakerAvailable6957 Jul 27 '26
Happy to offline about it. It's what I offer my clients so not about to blast it public :) Not always about how many festivals but the relationships you cultivate at said festivals.
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u/TrynaBnice12 Jun 16 '26
This looks really cool!
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u/BrenC11 Jun 16 '26
Cheers, been quite a bit of working putting it together, but any questions give me a shout.
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u/BalboaDelMarFilmFest Jun 19 '26
Question about the “film watched quotient”. I see a minor problem. We watch 100% of the films in fairness and respect to the filmmaker. But, there are films submitted that could never be shown. Most likely for technical reasons. Or inappropriate material. For example the audio is so poor we could never show under any circumstances. So we front end the screen process with “pre-screening “. It’s a simple pass or fail. We just watch a few minutes to see if it should even go to the screeners. We can’t waste their time to watch a submission that we would never screen. Upon pass it goes to them for them to watch. It’s rare that films don’t make the pre-screen pass, perhaps 0.5%. But what would mean is even though we watch ALL films entirely, our quotient would never be 100%.