The Documentary Competition is a place for filmmakers to submit their work, vote on the work of their peers, and compete for funding for a documentary. One of each round’s two winners will be chosen by Filmaka out of ten documentary submissions with the most peer votes in that competition cycle. Another submission will be chosen by the Filmaka team in its sole discretion. Both winners for that round will receive $500 and go on to compete at the end of the year for funding for a full-length documentary.
Your Documentary submission must be 30 seconds to 3 minutes long and you must be a registered member (Note: not free) to submit and to vote. The November-December round of the Documentary Competition ends January 7!
You can enter each cycle as many times as you want. You have to become a member to enter. All registered Filmaka site users can vote on the Documentary Competition entries during each contest cycle.
At the end of the cycle, Filmaka, at it’s discretion, will choose one winner from the 15 submissions with the most member votes. A second winner will also be chosen from all the Documentary entries, for that cycle, purely at Filmaka’s discretion.
The directors of the two winning entries will each win $500 and be eligible to compete in the end-of-the-year documentary contest. At the end of the year, all cycle competition winners and two wild card winners will be asked to submit one more Documentary entry on the same topic as their initial entry.
These follow-up submissions will be judged by the Filmaka staff and one will be chosen to receive funding for a full-length documentary. This full-length documentary will be on the same topic as the director’s winning shorts.
Please make sure your initial Documentary entry is on a topic that you would like to make a full-length film about. Once you have chosen this topic, you will need to stick with it for your second-round submission and, if chosen, it will end up being your subject matter for the full-length documentary which Filmaka will fund.
