evidence: Like most filmmakers, I wanted to get into the Holy Grail of film festivals...Sundance. Guess what? I didn't. You're most likely not going to get accepted into Sundance either and that's perfectly ok because their acceptance rate is less than 1% of submissions. Even 2016's academy award winning short film Stutterer wasn't accepted into Sundance when it was submitted, although I would much rather have an Oscar. This is why you need to enter a lot of different festivals of all sizes. Big festivals can get thousands of quality short film submissions, but some of the small to mid level festivals don't have such stiff competition but are still great festivals to be a part of! Smaller festivals also give you a better chance of winning awards and sometimes prizes. [...] Made your short film on a micro budget with limited to no crew? Yep, so did almost every other filmmaker submitting into that festival. Film festival programers like to be wowed or at least intrigued. For my short film, we built two of our sets inside the garage of our lead actor's house (the dressing room and bathroom). We also wrote about building those sets in an article for NoFilmSchool.com you can read here. Not only does this get the programer excited to see your film, but they also have something to promote your film (aka their festival) on their social media platforms. It never hurts to supply the festival with more things to share with their audience (behind the scenes photos, poster art, trailers, articles, etc).