Residents of Ashland, OR, Phoenix, AZ, Victoria, TX, and a city I'm not allowed to name yet: 20 Matches is coming soon to a film festival in your town!
A couple of months ago, my friend Jon Stout, who's seen his share of film festivals, told me to expect to get into about 10% of the festivals that I enter. Well, as of this writing, I have submitted 20 Matches to 41 festivals... and I've already been accepted into four of them. Now, if Jon's right, that'll be it. So let's hope Jon's not right. I'm still waiting to hear from 29 festivals, but odds are good for at least a couple more acceptances. (With eight rejections so far, odds are good for more of those as well.)
The Ashland Independent Film Festival, which runs April 7-11, 2016, was the first to accept 20 Matches, and I will be there April 7-10. I love Ashland so much that I bought my plane ticket to nearby Medford within 30 minutes of being accepted into the festival.
I should note that, after entering the usual top-tier festivals like Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW, and Rotterdam (all of whom turned me down), I wasn't sure where else to submit to, so MovieMaker Magazine's annual "50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee" list became my guide. Ashland had made that list, and so had the Victoria Texas Independent Film Festival, the third festival to accept me, but the earliest to play this year. So the World Premiere of 20 Matches will be on March 17 in this small Texas town. (VTXIFF runs March 17-20.) I can't miss that, so I will be in attendance. Plus, I've always wanted to go to Texas, and Victoria's just two hours from Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi. Texans, drive down and say howdy.
I certainly can't forget the International Horror & Sci Fi Film Festival, a programming arm of the larger Phoenix Film Festival, which runs concurrently. They were the second festival to accept 20 Matches, just a couple days after Ashland. This festival is held on April 7-14, 2016, but as they only screen short films April 7-10, there's a conflict with Ashland's schedule, so it's not likely that I can make it to Phoenix in time. However, the film's composer Chris Wirsig will be there to support the film, so Phoenicians and Scottsdaliens, be nice to him.
The fourth festival is a pretty big one, but I can't reveal it until March 16, as per their request. Until then...