⁣⁣The Chicago film industry was a central hub for motion picture production and exhibition before Hollywood became the undisputed capital of filmmaking. In the early 1900s, Chicago boasted the most significant number of production companies and filmmakers. This situation was partially preserved until 1920, when the Chicago film industry met decline for a combination of reasons, including the impact of the Great Depression. Not until the 1980s and early 21st century has Chicago experienced a film production revival. Movie production again entered Chicago in the 1980s, with the state of Illinois becoming a leader in money spent on film production. Blockbusters, such as Blues Brothers, Sixteen Candles, and The Dark Knight, have rejuvenated the Chicago film scene.
Inspired by this tradition, the mission of the Chicago Filmmaker Awards, aka Cifawards, is to recognize and reward independent filmmakers that are currently missing in mainstream Hollywood. Whether your talent is in front of the camera or behind it, we have a category for you. We are waiting to watch your films.
We are interested in professionally made independent works. Submissions are open for shorts, feature narratives, documentaries and animation, and even experimental films and music videos.
This will be a seasonal Awards event with yearly live screening. Each season, we will select the best-known movies and promote the winners through social media and the official website. Few of the winners of each season will be selected for our online event.

⁣Dubai Indie Film Festival is an online based bi-monthly festival. DIFF is looking for independent projects from all genres, particularly low or no-budget ones, as well as from all countries, especially from those traditionally underrepresented in the global film industry. The submitted projects are judged through private screenings by a random team of invited experts from academia and film industry from the region. From the pool of official selection, which has a very competitive acceptance rate, DIFF chose the nominees and award winners of the edition.

⁣⁣Washington Film Awards is a unique seasonal virtual film competitions. Attracting both powerhouse companies as well as talented new filmmakers, it is an unparalleled, truly international awards competition, not a traditional film festival – which allows filmmakers from around the world to enter their films in this prestigious competition.
The festival gives talented directors, producers, actors, creative teams the positive exposure they deserve. It discovers and honors the achievements of filmmakers who produce high quality projects. The festvial promotes award winners through press releases to filmmakers and industry contacts. Above all, we truly value and honor our filmmaking family.
The festival accept screenplays (up to 40 pages) and short films (up to 40 minutes long). It offers a seasonal competition. Each season, our jury selects the winners through private screenings. The seasonal winners will qualify for the online screening. Furthermore, all seasonal winners receive a free digital certificate (in JPG), ready for print.

⁣⁣⁣⁣Vancouver is a beautiful city that cultivates talent, friendships, and relationships within the entertainment arts industry. More than 60,000 direct and indirect jobs are generated by film and TV production in B.C.; more than 80 percent of these are in Metro Vancouver. Vancouver has the largest cluster of top VFX and Animation studios in the world, including Sony Pictures Imageworks, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Animal Logic and others. All of this means that Vancouver is the ideal location to take the next step in your filmmaking career. Inspired by this infrastructure, the Vancouver International Movie Awards was created with both a seasonal and yearly structure. The festvial has both online and physical screenings. At the end of each season, the jury selects the winners of each category through private screenings. The winners of each season will be then considered for online screening. Furthermore, each year we will choose a few films from the winners for the yearly competition; if they get selected by the programming committee, they will be shown and compete with other films-winners at the annual event. The official selection nominees are more than welcome to attend our yearly screening event and red carpet ceremony. Winners will be announced on our website every season.

⁣⁣⁣Philadelphia World Film Festival is an online based bi-monthly festival. PWFF is looking for independent projects from all genres, particularly low or no-budget ones, as well as from all countries, especially from those traditionally underrepresented in the global film industry. The submitted projects are judged through private screenings by a random team of invited experts from academia and film industry from the region. From the pool of official selection, which has a very competitive acceptance rate, PWFF chose the nominees and award winners of the edition.

⁣New Orleans International Film Awards’s mission is to bring international independent films to the widest possible audience in the region. The Festival aims to provide a cultural alternative to the commercial film experience, to support independent filmmakers, and promote the art of filmmaking.
New Orleans is part of an amazing worldwide community; a unique collaboration of multi-talented writers, film score composers and filmmakers. The festival mission is to entertain, inform, inspire, encourage and educate. We honor those artists who, through their creative work, actively increase awareness, provide multiple viewpoints, address complex social issues, and strengthen ties between international audiences. At the festvial, you can come together with other writers, directors and producers to create new opportunities, develop tools for success and forge new alliances within the international film and entertainment industry.

⁣Are you fed up with the politicization of art in contemporary society? Do you believe that you are an excellent filmmaker because of the inner artistic quality of your work and not because of the political layers of your film?. Do you find it irritating that festivals constantly ask you about your identities, your political views and make you fill interrogative forms in which you have to justify that you are a "good" morally correct artist for society? If you think any of this, welcome to the Hollywood International Golden Age Festival for ALL! We believe that an artist should be free to create her work, and no institutions for any reason should impose on her how her art should look. For us, a just and democratic cinema is a cinema that treats everybody the same and equally without imposing any artistic criteria to follow. This is the first principle of democracy. Each artist's "dignity" and free opinion is more important than the "assumptions" of intellectuals who feel they know what justice is and want to teach it to everybody. Every artist is equal, and every artist should be treated equally and with the same degree of respect. We have created this radical festival which this specific line of thoughts. This is the festival in which the only criteria to judge your work is its "artistic" quality and not any political demand of the current society. We judge films based on their inner qualities, and we don't care to be a politically correct festival. We want to prioritize once more the "art" of filmmaking.
The organizing and administrative team of Hollywood Golden Age started their activities in New York 2 years ago. This is a monthly New York-based film festival with a yearly event. Every month, our Jury will award the best films through private screenings. Monthly Award Winners will be chosen to compete in the online Award.

⁣Paris Lady MovieMakers Festival is a competitive online event that valorizes the work of women filmmakers or films about women. In this festival, we are looking for a unique and innovative perspective from female filmmakers to introduce them and promote them. We also accept projects directed by non-female directors who have something important to say about womanhood. We are an online event based in Paris and we are dedicated to female cinema.

⁣⁣Created to encourage content creators from unique backgrounds to share their stories, International Cosmopolitan Film Festival of Tokyo will promote the work of diverse (thought, race, gender, age, religion, physical ability and sexual orientation) filmmakers and recognize them for their achievements in film.
On the other hand, coronavirus and the challenges and devastating changes it has caused made it clear that the future of art might be in the hands of animations and computer generated services. In the past few months, many art projects have been either cancelled or halted and postponed but animation and digital companies were able to keep going despite the Coronavirus pandemic, and they have managed to survive through their use of CGI technologies instead of using traditional methods. The festival was founded with the goal of becoming a place to introduce the best of recent national and international animated art projects. The festival is framed by a range of different activities surrounding the art and industry of animation.

⁣Sacramento World Film Festival is a seasonal online awards event. The festival will welcome any independent project from all genres. The Festival is looking for independent projects from all genres, particularly low or no-budget ones and all countries. The selection process has two parts. First, the submitted projects are judged through private screenings by our internal programming team, and they will select the official films of each edition. Then the Festival's jurors, who are a random team of invited experts mainly from the film industry, will privately review the films and award the best projects. All of the winners will receive the official laurel and an achievement certificate and offer the option of online screening. Winner's announcements will be released through our social media to help promote the films.