What are film festivals for? And what’s the difference with the Oscars? In this article, we’ll explain everything there is to know about film festivals.
What are film festivals for, exactly? Every year, hundreds of festivals around the world carry the film industry forward, generating billions of dollars in revenue and fostering creative innovation for the seventh art. But how do film festivals work exactly? And why are they so important?
The annual Cannes Film Festival began in earnest yesterday, with the usual array of over-the-top dresses by world-renowned celebrities. The Cannes Film Festival is one of the most important festivals in the world, celebrated in the homonymous French town on the Mediterranean coast.
As every year, Cannes snatched some of the biggest names in the industry, from giants like David Cronenberg, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Paolo Sorrentino to well-respected authors like Paul Schrader, Jacques Audiard, and Jia Zhang-Ke. This year, the Cannes Film Festival will also premiere Francis Ford Coppola’s latest movie Megalopolis, his completely self-funded, $120 million pet project.
But why is the Cannes Film Festival so important? And what is the difference between these huge festivals with awards like the Oscars or the Golden Globes?
What are film festivals?
A very short definition of film festivals is that they represent the “markets” of the movie industry. It’s where producers and directors “sell” their films and where distributors and exhibitors “buy” them.
Every festival, from the smallest to the largest ones, has its own “backrooms” where industry representatives negotiate deals on their products. Large venues like the Cannes Film Festival have entire buildings dedicated to these activities, which are part of a separate event called “Marché du Film” (literally, film market).
The movies in competition at film festivals are therefore unreleased: producers show them to the public for the very first time. Although big-budget movies may have had private screenings before the festival’s premiere, they do not yet have a distributor attached to them.
Distributors are in charge of releasing the film in their territories, as well as paying for marketing and advertising costs. These costs can sometimes be nearly equal to the entire production budget of the film.
Distributing is therefore very expensive, but is also a necessary step for producers to see their movies in theaters. Being selected for a prestigious film festival will almost definitely ensure a distribution deal, which is why they are such a big deal for the industry.
What is the difference between producers, distributors, and exhibitors?
At this point, however, a better distinction between the three basic roles in the film industry is necessary to understand how their negotiations in film festivals take place.
The producer is the person who, of course, “produces” the movie. It raises funding, gathers the creative and technical cast, arranges the shooting, and follows the film in every step of the process.
On the other hand, the distributor is the figure in charge of releasing the film to audiences, as we said. Usually, distributors take far less risk than producers: while the latter needs to imagine a complete movie just from the initial idea, the distributor has the final product already at its disposal.
Sometimes, producers can also be distributors, although it’s not always the case. Distributing a movie takes very different skills than producing it. Moreover, producing and distributing a film is very expensive, making it affordable only for large companies to do both.
Finally, the exhibitor is the owner of the physical venue where the film is projected. Exhibitors can be as big as AMC, a global theater chain, or as small as the 50-seat cinema in a tiny European town.
Although exhibitors are by far the subjects who carry the least risk in the industry, they collect the revenues from a movie before anyone else. After retaining their share, exhibitors pass the remaining box office to the distributor, who then passes the net amount to the producer.
What is the difference between film festivals and awards (like the Oscars)?
The main difference between film festivals like Cannes or Venice and awards like the Oscars or the Golden Globes is the release time of the movies in competition.
While movies competing at festivals are being shown for the first time, awards give prizes to films already released to the general public.
Every award has different rules for when the film should have been released. The Oscars, for example, can only award movies released for at least one week in the solar year prior to the edition. The Oscars 2024, for example, only awarded movies released by December 2023 in the United States.
In short, awards are a celebration of the people who made the film, while festivals try to launch the movie into the market.
The “big three”: Cannes, Venice, Berlin
Every nation in the world has film festivals. Large markets like the United States, the UK, and France have hundreds of small local festivals every year. According to data from Stephen Follows, there are currently 3,000 film festivals currently active in the world.
However, three film festivals are considered by far the most important in the world. Having a movie in one of these competitions is the end goal of every film producer in the world, and is arguably more important than winning an Oscar. That is because, as we discussed, film festivals are a crucial step in the monetization of a movie.
The three most important film festivals in the world are Cannes, Venice, and Berlin.
The Cannes Film Festival was born in 1938 and takes place every year at the end of May. Its importance derives from its role as the “opening” of the new film season. At the Cannes Film Festival, the most important authors of the industry present their movies for the US summer release, the most profitable window for the American box office. Those selected for the official competition are therefore mostly “big names”.
The Venice Film Festival is the world’s oldest film festival, opening for the first time in 1932. It also mostly selects “big names” for its competition, and indeed there is a fierce rivalry with Cannes for which festival can select the most prestigious slate every year. The Venice Film Festival takes place between August and September and is considered the beginning of the “award season”, which ends in March of the following year with the Oscars.
Finally, the Berlin Film Festival is the world’s biggest platform for independent authors and filmmakers. It takes place in February and selects some of the most creative and innovative movies of the year, regardless of who produced or directed them.
