Festivals of Hope

In 1993, Spanish director Guillermo del Toro in desperation took his unusual vampire fable 'Cronos' to the Cannes Film Festival. This was his last chance to raise some money, after selling nearly everything he owns and remortgaging his house in order to make his dream project become a reality. Luckily, the film was a huge success and was praised for its originality and went on to scoop the Best Picture award, one of the festival's highest honours. From here Del Toro was able to make more films and still premieres at Cannes with his Spanish masterpiece 'Pan's Labyrinth' being his most recent effort.

The main aim of Cannes and other film festivals such as Sundance, Edinburgh, London, Berlin and Venice, just to name a few is to give aspiring filmmakers a chance to showcase their talent and get their films out there. Usually the films are looking for financial backing and can be brought for as much as £8 million depending on quality. Other directors that are already well known and successful such as Clint Eastwood for example, showcase their films to see what type of reaction they get, if they can make any changes or cuts and how they can be marketed.

The juries at the Festivals are often comprised of established film directors, actors/actresses, screenwriters and cinematographers among others. Its a wide variety and allows the films to be seen from all different technical points of view, making the judging fair and unbiased. Over the last few years, the festivals have been getting bigger and bigger, gaining publicity and getting more people's work noticed and distributed around the world.

Hopefully, the festivals can gain even more coverage and help budding filmmakers get noticed by worldwide audiences.
Signing out, Josh :)