This Stage 32 Blog comes from Martin Gooch, a director and screenwriter based in London, England. 

Festivals are a great way to say thank you to everyone who helped, impress your investors and meet as many people as you can. I met some of my very best friends at film festivals and it’s nice to hang out with like-minded people and talk about movies.

Having had numerous shorts and four feature films on the festival circuit, I have been to festivals all over the world. Here are 32 tips to make it a more pleasurable experience and hopefully more successful. These are all based on my actual experiences of things that actually happened. It’s all true.

The world is slightly different now we are in the covid-era but I think most of these Tips still apply, and hopefully festivals will come back fully in the future.