Film Festivals

The awards below are for both my feature script "Letters to Stephanie" (118 pages) and my short script "The Ultimate Gift" (39 pages) which is the first one-third of "Letters to Stephanie", and stands alone beautifully with a well defined beginning, middle and end.

There are roughly 3,000 film festivals in the United States. The top rated film festivals, like Sundance,  do not have screenplay/script categories, which immediately eliminates some researching. However, narrowing down the rest of the list prior to submitting my screenplay requires endless hours of research. Many appeal to different groups, i.e. a particular race, nationality, gender, religion, etc. Do they actually promote independent film makers? What categories do they have for screenplays? I look for categories like Drama, Family, Inspirational, etc. Some have categories of only Horror, Comedy, Action, etc. What are their page requirements for both short and feature length screenplays? Some accept only short and some are very, very short. I also research how long the festivals have been in the business? What kind of reviews do they have? What does Movie Maker Magazine say about them? Do they ask their winners to pay for their trophies?

I never in my wildest dreams imagined myself as a screenwriter, but when the greatest miracle of my life presented itself to me in a matter of seconds, like a movie in fast forward, I knew without a doubt that I was meant to write "Letters to Stephanie" both as a book and a screenplay.