Film festival

Film festivals
List of film festivals Europe North/Central America Oceania Fantastic and horror film festivals Documentary film festivals Human rights film festivals LGBT film festivals New Media art festivals

A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually annually and in a single city or region. Some film festivals show films outdoors or online.^[1]

Films may be of recent date and depending upon the festival's focus, can include international and/or domestic releases. Some film festivals focus on a specific format of film, such documentary, or runtime, such as short film festivals, or genre, such as horror films, category of filmmakers, such as women, production country/region or subject matter.

Film festivals can be competitive or non-competitive, and are often regarded within the film industry as launchpads for new filmmakers and indie films, as well as boosters for established filmmakers and studio productions. The films are either invited by festival curators, or selected by festival programmers from submissions made by the filmmakers, film producers, production companies, sales agents or distributors. Audiences have the opportunity to watch in festivals films premiering months before their commercial release, or films that may not benefit from a wide release and would otherwise be hard to find.^[2]

The oldest film festival in the world is the Venice Film Festival.^[3] The most prestigious film festivals in the world, known as the "Big Five", are (listed chronologically according to the date of foundation): Venice, Cannes, Berlin (the original Big Three), Toronto, and Sundance. Other major festivals include Busan, Karlovy Vary, Locarno, San Sebastián, SXSW, Telluride, Tribeca, and the three largest and most prestigious genre festivals, Sitges, Fantasia and Fantastic Fest.^[4][5][6][7]