THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 62 OCTOBER 30, 2019

A

fter several years toil-
ing over her debut short film,
Eternal Waltz, Cindy Marinangel
made an eleventh-hour decision
ahead of its U.K. premiere at
the Eurocinema Film Festival
in October 2018. Despite tight
personal finances, as producer,
writer and star of the centu-
ries-hopping romance, she
concluded that she needed to be there.
Borrowing money from her parents to pay for the flights
from New York to London, the filmmaker emailed organiz-
ers excitedly to tell them that she would be attending and
would be able to take part in any Q&A discussions, as pre-
viously mentioned in her official invitation. “So sorry for
the late reply!” she wrote, just four days before the screen-
ing was due to take place at the Royal Holloway University
on Oct. 30. “Thanks for the update! We are waiting for
you!” came the reply.
Landing on the morning of Oct. 29, Marinangel checked
into her Airbnb (a spare room in the somewhat unglamor-
ous east-of-London town of Slough, perhaps best known
as the setting of Ricky Gervais’ original The Office) and got
ready for the red carpet opening-night reception, where
she would be able to mingle with fellow filmmakers from
the 22 other shorts taking part in the event.

Beyond the glamour of Cannes and Sundance, a below-the-radar network of international events

promises to boost the careers of struggling filmmakers, but those opportunities often come with

hefty price tags — and plenty of disappointment: ‘This is an area where people can be exploited’

But Marinangel still hadn’t heard back from the organiz-

ers about Eternal Waltz’s exact screening time. With no

other contact except the solitary email address she’d been

coordinating with, she rang the university.

There was a problem.

The school knew nothing about the Eurocinema Film

Festival, and it certainly wasn’t taking place within its

walls. Marinangel was outraged. She fired off several

angry emails before eventually receiving a rather short

reply Oct. 31 — a day after the festival was supposed to

take place — saying that there had been “some issues” with

contacts at the venue (something denied by the univer-

sity, which contacted the London Metropolitan Police’s

fraud department).

Marinangel’s experience may be among the worst

but is just one of a catalog of complaints lodged as the

array of festivals worldwide has ballooned in the past

few decades. At the same time, online platforms like

Withoutabox (started in 2000, shuttered in September)

and FilmFreeway (launched in 2014) have given emerg-

ing filmmakers a means of easily finding film festivals

en masse. In 2013, film industry data researcher and

producer Stephen Follows found that 3,000 film festivals

were active, 75 percent of which were created in the past

decade; in June, FilmFreeway reported that it had 8,000

festivals on its platform. Though some obscure festi-

vals haven’t lasted long, others are flourishing thanks to

BY

Katie Kilkenny

and

Alex Ritman

ILLUSTRATION BY

Adam Simpson