FilmFreeway Reviews 

Where to start?!

I receive dozens of spam emails daily to both my company and personal accounts. I only registered these addresses through FilmFreeway, so I know they have not been found elsewhere. I also do not list the email address publicly on my profile. Which means they can only be getting my details directly from FilmFreeway - but they deny this, and claim I must have the address posted elsewhere.

There's zero vetting, and zero barrier to entry, which means that there's endless fake or scam festivals that are solely there to take your money and run - and because FF takes a cut, they do nothing to stop this. There is no way to tell if a festival actually shows a film in a cinema environment - even those that post a cinema as the location, there's never images to back it up.

FF also takes payment for sponsored listings, which is fine because they have to make money, but the whole front page is littered with ads which means you can easily miss out on actual upcoming deadlines because they are hidden by paid listings.

Their additional service fee added to every transaction is also ridiculous - again, especially since they take a cut from the festival too.

This place needs a complete overhaul or just a new competitor to swoop in.

As others have said. After successfully using Filmfreeway, I now receive an un-ending quantity of spam from film festivals I've never heard of. Multiples per day. After posting this review, Film Freeway deactivated my account and threatened to sue me.

The awards show company california music awards is the one i submitted too. THey were very unprofessinal not even looking at my submission until 2 days before the event in san fransisco ca!
the website says that you can rate your experince but i wasnt able to due to this colosion

WARNING: I just received an unsolicited email from Japan International Film Festival from Chiasa Sakurai who claims to be the Festival Coordinator for Japan IFF. I tried to look up the people involved with the festival(s discussed below) and they don't seem to have any online presence. I then decided to look up the Registrant Organization for the japanfilmfest domain and found that the site was registered to: Pegah Tarkhooni. Curiously enough Pegah Tarkhooni is also the CEO and Registrant Organization for the Munich New Wave Short Film Festival website as well as the Venice FullShot Film Festival (Full Shot cinemag) website. Curious.. I thought. I actually regretfully paid for a submission of my film to the Munich New Wave Short Film Festival thinking the event was online due to the pandemic but realize now it is a way for Pegah Tarkhooni or anyone else involved to have multiple festivals at once and get quite a lot of revenue from artists submitting to seemingly different festivals in different parts of the world (Tokyo, Munich, Venice and how many more?!) that were actually all created by the same person. So nice of them to invite me to submit my film (a $60 fee for an online event!) to the Japan International Film Festival, no? I wrote to FilmFreeway and requested that they look into both Pegah Tarkhooni and the very suspicious film festivals that are disguising themselves as support and community for creatives but were really just created to empty the wallets of hard working artists. Reprehensible. Pegah Tarkhooni care to comment? I would be happy to get a clear explanation and change my review...

Contact the festivals you are interested in directly. I will update my review if I ever hear back from the 'people' associated with the 'festivals' or from FilmFreeway with their action plan.

I've been using film freeway as a platform for years and have never had any issues! It's user friendly, filmmaker friendly, and contains everything you'd need to apply to film festivals in one place!

I paid thousands on Film Freeway applying to festivals.
I now receive literally tens of thousands of junk emails from all sorts of festivals I never heard of nor applied to. I can only explain this by Film Freeway selling our data to third parties. Utterly useless website.

This place is ridiculous. Festivals only use filmfreeway to make extra money but they simply don’t even try to watch your film. We’ve created an account for filmfreeway but only one festival really viewed the film out of 50. But we probably spend thousand’s. After having a world sales who places the film without filmfreeway it works and we’ve got 10 festivals in just 2 month. Don’t spend a cent on filmfreeway. Get a worldsales instead. This place is the biggest bulls**t.

Film Freeway staff couldn't be nicer. The film festivals that are not the few big league names like Outfest, Sundance, Slamdance, and Tribeca on there are all seemingly Z-list festivals either owned by the same handfuls of groups of people, or they're all friends with each other. We were being bombarded with spam daily by the festivals. When we complained to the different festivals to remove us and stop the spam, we never won a film festival again after we were winning lots of lesser known festival awards. FilmFreeway doesn't put a stop to the data compromises. They are making your personal e-mail address available to all festivals and won't make it private. You could use a burner e-mail but every day you will be pounded for expensive entries by nobody film festivals and go crazy. FilmFreeway is worth it for major festivals you see stars premiering films at and not worth it for everyone else. Beware. Your e-mail address will be all over mailing lists. Complain and get blacklisted. Every indie filmmaker we ask about their FilmFreeway experiences backs this up. You won't have a career buying 90 fake film awards. We see actors with over 100 fake Z-list film "wins" whose careers you will never heard of but you're an "award winning director" or "award winning actor" now. Spend your money wisely on better headshots or any investment in your career. We met a second person who said her account was blackmailed after she complained and had a winning streak. Spend your money on a filmmaking class at a university or anything but this. If you want to throw money down the drain, at least take it to Vegas where your odds of winning are higher than us ever winning an award again because we've been blacklisted. We at least won some Z-list awards. Some people we met never complained about the spam and won 1 award at most. Avoid. Save your money. As for Slamdance or any A-list festivals, you won't have a shot at those anyway unless your bio reads that you majored in Feminist Film Studies at Harvard and wrote your thesis in nuns during the bubonic plague protesting the prices of supermarket food, or your movie stars a man who once played Batman seeking an "I'm a real actor's actor" notice. There are better ways to make it into the studio system than FilmFreeway and you'll have your money in the bank.

they don't support the writer. if a festival doesn't hold up to its side of the deal there should be refunds. there should always be refunds before script is read. honestly if you're entering a film festival and they keep the judges names private it's BS. i've won over 40 times on filmfreeway and literally nothing happens except
i've spent a ton of money for nothing. also most of their festivals charge you for awards. my suggestion: stick to the big festivals. save your money to make movie instead of betting these smaller festivals will help.

We will be happy to give the highest rating to this company. The high level of service and professionalism make FilmFreeway one of the most leading and strongest companies in the world in the film industry helping filmmakers to find high quality film festivals and film festivals to find good works. We thank them from the bottom of our hearts and wish them only good luck and success in this hard business.

I paid this company to enter my film into a film festival, never heard anymore from the festival or FilmFreeway about my entry?
Then i noticed they advertised another film festival in France, this time i tried to contact the festival direct, trouble is none of my many emails got answered, i could not find the festival anywhere, it was as though it did not exist? This was my first time at entering any of my work into a festival, i was a rookie!
Luckily i spoke to a friend who had worked as a pro camera man on loads of major block busters, under many very famous directors all over the world, he told me to get my money back ASAP, this company is renowned for taking money to enter film festivals, then you hear nothing! All i can say is that i have been bombarded daily from Film Freeway with offers of entering new film festivals, and strangely all of the festivals have very short deadlines to enter your film? Perhaps the unwary may pay and enter one of these so called back yard wooden shed festivals, or one of the spectre translucent festivals that cannot be found anywhere on the net or in the industry, or in any film guide literature - be very wary, contact the film festival direct, if they don't answer then they are not worth contacting! However i have contacted PayPal who are trying to get my hard worked for money back from Film Freeway! BE WARNED!

This is a great platform for filmmakers very helpful and kind customer service they really try to help the film community worldwide the right place for a creative mind

FilmFreeway is basically a junk mail machine that shares your email address with hundreds of fake and pointless "online festivals" who again share it with others, and if you should ever try to submit a film to any of them, don't expect to hear back.

If you've put blood, sweat and money into making a film, don't just lump it into an aggregate website; carefully select the festivals you want to submit it to and go to them directly. If they have a FilmFreeway link on their site, stay well clear.

WARNING! For the indie filmmakers, especially those that make shorts on a micro budget. After a few submissions you will (or you won't!) see a filmfreeway sudden "SERVICE Fee" to "help us run our platform, build new features and offer best customer service".

The submissions are already so high, why sudden additional service fees have to come out of the struggling filmmakers pocket? I emailed them asking why there is no disclosure, no heads up about the sudden fees, why no transparency - they emailed back with even more hard sell - suggesting to get a Gold membership "... .

"We have recently introduced a nominal service fee on paid submissions to help us cover the costs of operating our platform. Also, there are no service fees for Gold members, should you become interested in trying this service in the future. "

Which means - you, filmmaker not happy with sudden additional Service fee, why not buy a membership?!

I feel cheated. So many articles online state that "filmfreeway is always FREE to filmmakers".

Dishonest. Disappointing. Not trustworthy.

I've had nothing but great experiences with FilmFreeway. Their site is clean, easy to use and their support team is always ready to help if you need it.

I couldn't imagine submitting to festivals without having everything in one spot like this. This platform has made the submissions process so much easier. They have a customer for life with me.

I’m new to filmmaking and after completing my first film I wasn’t sure where to start. A friend recommended I check out FilmFreeway and I can’t thank her enough for introducing me to their awesome service. I’m not the most tech-savvy person, but I was able to easily navigate the site and submit to some great fests. Keeping my fingers crossed for good results! I’ve honestly only had one interaction with their staff who seriously went above and beyond for me. I didn’t realize that I subscribed to their optional subscription service and like the rest of the world the pandemic hit me hard financially. Unlike other companies I’ve dealt with, their team did not hesitate to refund me. No questions asked. They even took the time to answer a handful of follow up questions - in detail I might add. Great experience so far with a solid service and nice folks.

FilmFreeway is the THE place to go for submitting your projects to festivals. I have been using FilmFreeway since 2016 and I still use it to this day. Like anything in life you will need to do your research into what festivals will be best for your specific project. Sometimes it's good to aim high for big world premieres, sometimes you want a quick round of feedback from a festival, and sometimes you want to see if you can win an award against other projects being submitted.

FilmFreeway is like a mind reader, always adding new features we need to make it easier for us. I wanted to 'like' festivals, and then one day *BAM* a new feature appeared for making my own list of favorite festivals and more. Imagine that! I emailed FilmFreeway to thank them!

FilmFreeway is so easy to use and there's so much helpful information about each festival, it makes the experience fun. Go explore all the festivals, check out the reviews, check out the photos, check out their facebook, see if it's something you can see yourself be a part of! Imagine that YOU'RE the one in those photos holding the awards!

I thought FilmFreeway was super easy to use and customer service was great when I had a few basic questions about submitting my film to festivals. The negative reviews about not getting their film accepted is just part of the game, not an issue with the company. I like FilmFreeway - way better than anything else I’ve used.

Filmfreeway is far superior site to all the others. Its great to navigate and edit your film and profile, the layout is great, its very easy to find the information you need. Blows the others away by a mile. It is much easier to put all the material in one place than to send all the material to different festivals all the time.
I like the filtering possibilities where you look up festivals, which makes it easier for a fairly narrow film to find the festivals that may be relevant. As well as the ability to update the page easily and follow
the film’s statistics.

Spent $700 with these bums at FilmFreeway.

Out of 12 film festivals I applied to, I only heard back from 4.

You would think the 8 other film festivals would have been gracious to at least say they were passing, right? They took our $50 bucks and laughed their way to the bank.

AVOID applying to film festivals. If your film is any good, just email the festival director and send them the film with NO APPLICATION FEE.