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Submissions FAQ

FilmFreeway Submissions

Rules & Terms

Any work produced and completed in the past 18 months prior to our upcoming edition (July-August 2025) is eligible for consideration in our general lineup, as well as for our Audience Awards, and may also potentially be placed in one of our juried competitions.

Any work made available worldwide for an online public viewing before or during our dates will be ineligible for our programming. Any work made available for a geo-blocked virtual festival screening - outside of Canada - is still eligible. In other words, if your film plays online in Spain but cannot be seen outside of Spain it is still eligible for our programming.

If you are unsure if your film qualifies for our Festival, please contact our Programming Manager, Becca McKay, at submissions@fantasiafestival.com before submitting.

Submission fees will not be refunded under any circumstances.

If selected, all commercial/private property including all trademark/copyrighted materials shown or recorded on the project is the responsibility of the filmmaker. By submitting an entry, the filmmaker states that they are responsible as an agent to promote the film and that the film is an original work.

Participants agree that clips and images from their film may be used and/or published in the Fantasia program guide, on the Fantasia website, on the Fantasia Social Media, and for any promotional purposes which Fantasia deems appropriate.

If selected, Fantasia will cover one-way of the shipping cost of the exhibition print/video copy of your film, either incoming or outgoing.

The Basics

If you have a question about your submission, please contact our Programming Manager, Becca McKay, through email at submissions@fantasiafestival.com. Only legitimate requests and respectful inquiries will be answered.

Our submissions open on September 1st, 2025. For more information, please look at our FilmFreeway: https://filmfreeway.com/FantasiaFilmFestival

Fantasia has five submission deadlines:

  • Earlybird Deadline: December 1, 2024
  • Regular Deadline: January 1, 2025
  • Late Deadline: February 1, 2025
  • Extended Deadline: March 1, 2025
  • Last Chance Deadline: April 15, 2025

    The main difference between each deadline is the cost to submit. All submissions received by Fantasia, no matter the date in which they are submitted, are considered equally and by multiple members of our programming team.

    We will notify you of our final decision regarding your film via FilmFreeway on May 30th, 2025 (whether accepted or not-selected.) FilmFreeway requires our festival to notify all submitters of their selection status at the end of our season. If your film is an early selection, there will be a possibility of finding out that your film has been accepted before our notification date. If we have not yet been in contact with you about your submission, we will not be able to give you an answer before the notification date.

    The submission cost varies based on which deadline you are submitting to and which category your film falls under. Please refer to the cost and category breakdowns on our festival’s FilmFreeway page here.

    Our submission fees are non-refundable. Please make sure to carefully read our terms and conditions prior to submitting your film. Although, if you make a mistake when submitting, fear not, as our Programming Manager is happy to help you out or you can reach out directly to FilmFreeway’s wonderful team:https://filmfreeway.com/help.

    Eligibility

    General:

    • Only films completed in the past 18 months prior to our upcoming edition of the festival are eligible for consideration for general programming.
    • As a general rule, with very rare exceptions, a film that’s been showing publicly on the circuit for longer than a year and a half isn’t eligible for programming consideration.
    • One important distinction - if the film was completed longer than 18 months ago but was only first shown publicly more recently, it could still be eligible for consideration. For example, a film that was completed years prior but never entered the festival circuit is something we may be interested in.
    • Any work made available worldwide for an online public viewing before or during our dates will be ineligible. A cast/crew-only premiere does not count as a public viewing.
    • If your film has been made available for the public to purchase, that to us means it’s been commercially released and would no longer be eligible for consideration.
    • Stills, trailers, clips, or other similar content can be posted online by your cast and crew, however, without rendering your film ineligible.

    Works-in-progress:

    • Fantasia will accept works-in-progress as submissions.
    • We accept works-in-progress as submissions provided that you feel that your current version reflects what your finished film will be reasonably well. Hopefully, you should only be sending these versions when you have no other choice—like if the film is still being completed as we approach our final deadline.
    • Only submit an unfinished version of your work if you’re certain that you will be able to have it completed in time for our festival dates in the event of it being invited.
    • Something important to note is that we are not able to ensure a re-watch of multiple versions of your film over the coming months. Your film will be watched once by multiple members (3 at a minimum) of our programming team, and therefore, you should be sending it to us in a version that best represents the final film.
    • We encourage updates in note form via email so that we’re kept up to date with the titles that we’re considering, but we can’t promise that the film will be looked at anew!

    Provenance:

    • In order to qualify as a Canadian co-production, at least part of the film’s financing needs to have come from Canada and at least one of the producers needs to be Canadian. Ideally, either the director or screenwriter should be Canadian as well.
    • Co-productions can be shot anywhere in the world, but a full-on Canadian production would be financed and shot in Canada.
    • Essentially, if it were filmed here with more Canadian cast and crew, or if the funding came entirely from a Canadian entity (Like Telefilm or CMF), it would fit more logically in the Canadian submission. If the funding comes from an indie production company, then it would be harder to make a case for it being Canadian content.

    Premiere Status Requirements

    For Quebec films, we are more lenient regarding premieres and in exceptional cases we may program a film that has been shown in Montreal. For anything else, at the very least, the film must be a Montreal premiere.

    Premiere Status Definitions:

    • World Premiere: The film will not have a public presentation before its scheduled presentation at the Festival.
    • International Premiere: The film will not have a public presentation anywhere outside its country of origin before its scheduled presentation at the Festival.
    • North American Premiere: The film will not have a public presentation anywhere in Canada, Mexico, or the United States before its scheduled presentation at the Festival.
    • Canadian Premiere: The film will not have a public presentation anywhere in Canada before its scheduled presentation at the Festival.
    • Quebec Premiere: The film will not have a public presentation anywhere in Quebec before its scheduled presentation at the Festival.
    • Montreal Premiere: The film will not have a public presentation in Montreal before its scheduled presentation at the Festival.

      Submitting Your Film

      • In order to submit your film, you must register and submit your film via FilmFreeway. Visit our FilmFreeway listing here.
      • All submissions must be submitted online via FilmFreeway. Online screeners or downloadable files received via email will not be accepted. FilmFreeway allows for direct digital uploads, Vimeo links, or YouTube links.
      • For more information on FilmFreeway project and video uploads, please visit the FilmFreeway help page here.
      • You can submit more than one film project to our festival. You must complete separate applications for each project you plan to submit and pay a separate submission fee, but can do so under the same FilmFreeway account. For more information on how to add multiple projects to your FilmFreeway account, please visit this link

      Screening Formats

      • We require DCPs for all films screening at our festival, but are happy to help facilitate the process for your film if it is selected.
      • You as a filmmaker will not have to worry about how the film will be screened, as we have a fantastic Print Traffic team who can support you and therefore the formats we require should not impact your submission.
      • It is also important to mention that DVD’s haven’t been acceptable for many years as a submission format.

        Random F.A.Q.s

        1. Who watches my film?
        Each film that comes in through submissions is assigned to at least three members of our pre-screening team and goes through a viewing process and consideration by our programmers. This process includes watching a film in its entirety, rating the project, and writing a review. All submissions are considered equally and we guarantee that each submission will be watched and considered by multiple members of our programming team—this ethos is essential to Fantasia.

        2. If I’ve edited my film since submitting, do I need to resubmit it to have the new version considered?
        As a general rule, we don’t watch submissions across multiple cuts/versions as we enter your submission into our pre-screening process as soon as it is submitted. You can always change the link on your FilmFreeway page so that when the film is revisited those changes may be noted.

        As well, if you want to provide notes on the changes via email, we can supply these notes to our pre-screeners that watched the film in case they are interested to revisit and potentially tweak their notes.

        Please only submit your most complete version of your film, as doing so will ensure that our programming team is able to consider your film in its version that will most closely reflect what might be screened at our festival. The more complete your film is, the better chance it has being programmed.

        3. May we submit more than one film to your festival?
        Filmmakers are welcome to submit multiple productions to Fantasia.

        4. What are your sound requirements?
        We can screen stereo, 5.1, and 7.1, but are currently unable to play Atmos mixes.

        5. Do credits count in my film’s official runtime?
        Yes.

        6. Are subtitles required?
        French subtitles are always appreciated, but not mandatory for your submission. Any films submitted in a language besides English or French, require English or French subtitles to be considered for programming.

        7. Are trailers required?
        Trailers aren’t required for a submission (but are great to have if a film is accepted, closer to the festival period).

        8. Are there fee waivers?
        As Fantasia can understand the great costs associated with filmmaking and film festival submissions, we understand why you have requested this waiver. Although, it is important to note that we cannot offer waivers, as the cost of your submission is only shifted onto other filmmakers who are paying in full for their submission to in turn subsidise your entry. We nonetheless understand the economic difficulties any filmmakers come across and wish we could do more to help.

        ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS?
        Please reach out to submissions@fantasiafestival.com