A festival strategy board for a short film, shared with your producer

What this board can't do for a festival run

• No festival database. You type every festival in yourself, with its fee, deadline and premiere rule copied from the festival's own page. FilmFreeway, whose home page says it lists 11,000+ festivals, is the place to search.
• No submitting and no status feed. FilmFreeway's home page says you can "Track every entry" there; a board card only says what you typed on it. Move the card when you hear.
• No deadline alerts. A date in a card's title is text. Nothing warns you that Lakeshore closes in a week, so put your own reminder in your calendar.
• No fee totals. The app doesn't add up cards, so the "$535 planned" in the example was added by hand. A spreadsheet does that for you.
• Check an arrow after you move its card. Arrows between cards in different lists stay attached when cards are reordered inside a list and when a whole list moves. We haven't tested what an arrow does when its card is dragged into another list, so look at it after you move one. The arrows are reminders, not rules.
• 150 items on the free plan, across your account. Each card and each list is 1 of the 150. The example is 29 cards and 8 lists, so 37. A real run of 40 festivals as cards, plus the plan, deliverables and checklist, is roughly 60 to 70 items (our arithmetic), and any other board on your account counts too. Pro is $5 a month billed yearly ($59.99 a year) and removes the item limit.
• 5 boards and 3 images per board on the free plan. Keep one board per film. The example has no images, and a poster or still would use one of the 3.

How to plan a short film's festival run on one board

Shore Scripts' guide for short filmmakers (August 2025) says the festival should match your goals for the film and for your career, then your film's genre and type, and then what you can afford. That order is the board, left to right. Read the sources below for the detail; this is how the example puts them to work.

1. 1Write the goal first. The Plan list opens with what you want from the run: to be seen, to meet producers, to qualify for an award. The Wyoming Film Festival's account on r/Filmmakers (January 2024) said that having specific goals is what lets you pick festivals that fit. The goal decides which tier you spend on.
2. 2Set three budgets before any fee. The Film Festival Doctor splits it into submission fees, deliverables (screening copies and marketing materials) and travel, and says a festival will not necessarily pay your travel. The example has a card for each and a Deliverables list whose cards add up to the deliverables budget.
3. 3Say what is still unscreened. One card records your premiere status. The Film Festival Doctor says only a small number of festivals ask for a world premiere, and many that do ask only for a city, state or town one. Check each festival's own rules page, and keep the premiere until your top choices have answered.
4. 4Fill the three tiers. Tier 1 holds the few reach festivals, genre and theme fit holds festivals that program films like yours, and regional and local holds festivals that favour filmmakers from the area. Put each festival's fee, deadline and premiere rule in its card title, as the example does, so the whole decision is visible without opening a card.
5. 5Check before you pay. The last list is three questions to run on a festival before its fee: what it programmed in the last three years, what its premiere rule is, and whether the fee is higher on the final deadline. The Wyoming Film Festival's account on r/Filmmakers (January 2024) recommends looking at which films played a festival before and where those films premiered.
6. 6Move cards as answers come. TODO becomes SENT, then a decision. When one says no, draw an arrow to the next festival you would try, as the example does with its "if no" and "try next" arrows.

The board shows your plan and your fees in one place. It doesn't tell you which festivals are good. Whether to wait a year for a Tier 1 answer or play genre festivals now is yours to decide, and the people who answer that question online disagree (compared below).

What filmmakers and festivals say about tiers and premieres

These are single accounts and guides, not a measured pattern. On r/FilmFestivals (July 2025) a filmmaker with a 7-minute horror short asked whether to wait a year for Tier 1 or build buzz at genre festivals first. A commenter who says they direct a film festival called gambling everything on Tier 1 high-risk for shorts and suggested genre festivals first. Another said a world premiere does matter and that if you want Tier 1 you submit there first, then do regional festivals. A third said premiere status matters to top festivals but a film that catches a curator's eye can override it. Another commenter said some festivals, Sundance for example, programme films already online and told the filmmaker to check each festival's regulations.

On r/Filmmakers (January 2024) one commenter called Sundance, Slamdance, TIFF, Tribeca, Cannes and Venice "lottery tickets" and said to avoid anything online-only or with "Awards" in its name. Shore Scripts says top-tier festivals are very competitive: it puts Sundance's 2025 selection at 57 films from over 11,000 submissions (all categories, not just shorts) and estimates short-film acceptance at Cannes well below 1%. A board doesn't settle the disagreement. It lets you and your producer put your festivals in the tier you each believe in, side by side.

Set up the board with your producer or co-director

1. 1In the share menu, set "Anyone with the link can edit". New boards start view-only.
2. 2Send the link, or the 4-digit join code. The code expires after 2 hours of inactivity, so send the link to anyone you'll need later.
3. 3Each person signs in free (Google, Apple or email) to write. Someone who isn't signed in can open the link and read everything, but can't change anything. Once they're signed in, what they move or add shows up on your board within a few seconds, and you see theirs the same way.
4. 4The board counts as one of their 5 free boards, and cards they add count toward their own 150. If they're already at 5 boards, they can still open the link and write; the board just isn't added to their boards.
5. 5Agree who owns which cards. If two of you type in the same card at once, the two edits merge letter by letter with no lock, so give one person the fee numbers and keep the status words (TODO, SENT, OUT) in the title.

Free calls on the board run up to 60 minutes per call, with a warning 10 minutes before the end; everyone signs in free, calls aren't recorded, and Pro has no limit. So you can decide the Tier 1 list with your producer on the board itself. If you are earlier in the project, the short film pre-production board covers who owns what before the shoot.

Festival planning tools, side by side

Each row is from the tool's own pages, read on November 11, 2026. Features and prices change, so check the page before you choose.

When another tool is the better choice

• You are ready to submit. Use FilmFreeway or the festival's own submission page. This board can't send a film or pay a fee.
• You want a long list with fees and deadlines already filled in. Assemble's worksheet lists festivals with those fields, and FilmFreeway's search lists thousands. A board starts empty.
• You want totals and sorting. A spreadsheet adds up your fees and sorts by date. This board does neither.
• You want a festival strategist, not a tool. The Film Festival Doctor's founder, Dr. Rebekah Louisa Smith, offers festival strategy work for films, which a board can't replace.
• You live in Notion already. A Notion template keeps the tracker next to the rest of your project.

Questions