General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20268 min read

Film festival

As defined in the Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies, a film festival is an organized occasion at which several films are shown one after another over consecutive days at one venue, and where awards in different categories are frequently given out.¹ In practice the term covers a spectrum running from a handful of long-running, state-backed competitions that shape the international film industry to thousands of small local showcases, and scholars have argued that a full definition must also account for programming, audiences, funding, and influence on cinema in general¹.

Key fact	Detail
Definition	An event at which films are screened on successive days at a single location, often with prizes in various categories (Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies, Kuhn & Westwell, 2012)¹
Scale	More than 8,000 film festivals a year worldwide¹
Oldest festival	Venice International Film Festival, first organized in 1932 and annual from 1935²
The "Big Three"	Cannes (1946), Venice (1932), and Berlin (1951), described as three of the most well-known and esteemed festivals worldwide³
Top prize	The Cannes Palme d'Or is considered among the highest honors a film can receive⁴
Accreditation	Fifteen festivals hold FIAPF accreditation, the relevant international accreditation for top-rated festivals³
Premiere rule	Cannes, Venice, and Berlin never present feature films that have already been screened elsewhere⁵

Origins in Venice and the fascist controversy

The first film festival in history was organized in 1932 as part of La Biennale di Venezia, under the auspices of the Biennale's president, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, the sculptor Antonio Maraini, and Luciano De Feo. Held on the terrace of the Hotel Excelsior on the Venice Lido, the 1932 event was not competitive but screened films that became classics, including It Happened One Night by Frank Capra, Grand Hotel by Edmund Goulding, Frankenstein by James Whale, and Zemlya by Aleksandr Dovzhenko. The festival proved popular enough to become an annual event from 1935 onwards².

The 1938 edition turned the Mostra, as the Venice festival is known, into a stage for Italian politics under Mussolini and his relations with Nazi Germany. At the last moment, despite rules prohibiting prizes for documentaries, Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia won the Mussolini Cup in joint first position with Goffredo Alessandrini's Luciano Serra, Pilot. Delegations from democratic nations were furious; Great Britain and the United States walked out of Venice vowing never to return⁶. The Cannes city history records the same episode as jury members changing the award winners a few hours before the official announcement, under pressure from Hitler and Mussolini, in favor of a Nazi propaganda documentary⁷.

Cannes: an aborted 1939 and a 1946 restart

The French response. While riding back by train from Venice to Paris on 3 September 1938, Philippe Erlanger, who represented the French government at the Venice festival and served as the Ministry of Education and Fine Arts' inspector general for film, hit upon the idea of establishing France as a new meeting place for international cinema. He reported to the minister Jean Zay, and the Association Française d'Action Artistique was entrusted with establishing the festival under Erlanger's leadership⁶. The aim was a democratic counterpoint to the Mostra, extending France's influence and contributing to the economic development of its film industry⁶.

The first festival was scheduled to open in Cannes on 1 September 1939, under the honorary presidency of Louis Lumière, at the same time as the Venice festival. Germany and Italy were invited and refused to attend; the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union promised to come. Crisis building in the summer of 1939 derailed the event, and only nine countries agreed to take part⁶^•⁷.

The 1946 edition. Erlanger put the idea forward again in July 1945, but the French state and the municipality of Cannes could no longer afford the expense, so the necessary funds were raised through a public subscription. In September 1946 the first actual festival opened in a festive atmosphere despite a series of technical problems, beginning what the city's history calls a long golden era that made Cannes the place to be for filmmaking countries. The first Cannes festival introduced the world to Italian cinema and its neorealism⁷. Pinning down the festival's exact age is complicated by this history: an abortive first season in 1939, two later festivals canceled for lack of funding, and a third canceled because of political upheaval in 1968⁶.

The major festivals and the annual circuit

Three festivals are generally treated as the top of the hierarchy: Venice (established 1932), Cannes (1946), and Berlin (1951), which a study of festival accreditation describes as the three most well-known and esteemed major festivals worldwide, locations "where people, prestige, and power tend to concentrate"³. A benchmark study for the Netherlands Film Fund likewise names the Festival de Cannes, the Berlinale, and La Biennale di Venezia as three of the top film festivals globally, adding the Sundance Film Festival and the Academy Awards to capture international recognition more broadly⁸. Industry guides describe Venice, Cannes, and Berlin as the "Big Three" of European festivals, with Toronto and Sundance joining them to form the broader "Big Five"⁹.

The major festivals occupy fixed slots in the industry calendar: Sundance in Utah in January, the Berlinale in February, Cannes in May, Venice in late August, and Toronto in early September⁵. The 2026 calendar illustrates the density of the circuit around them, with Locarno in August, Telluride and Venice in early September, Toronto and San Sebastián in mid-September, and Busan, the BFI London Film Festival, and DOC NYC among dozens of others in the autumn¹⁰.

What festivals do

Premieres and competition. Because Cannes, Venice, and Berlin refuse to show any feature that has been seen publicly before, the leading festivals end up chasing the same titles; makers of independent films therefore plan their filming and editing to fit Cannes' calendar, allowing its selection committee to view them a couple of months ahead of the event⁵. Acceptance into a major festival adds significant prestige to a film, and some festival awards, such as the Palme d'Or, are considered among the highest honors a film can receive⁴. Festivals also function as markets: at Venice, the Venice Production Bridge runs co-production and gap-financing markets alongside the screenings¹¹.

Visibility for independent cinema. The curatorial practices of festivals like Venice and Cannes have provided visibility to independent productions and minor genres such as documentary and short films, challenging narratives of film history dominated by major studios¹². Sundance, founded as a small three-day showcase in 1977 and expanded by the Sundance Institute into a ten-day event for new American independent narrative and documentary films, is high on most U.S. independent filmmakers' lists of venues for premiering features, documentaries, and shorts¹³^•¹⁴. Specialized festivals serve particular genres and forms, such as the documentary-focused Doclisboa in Portugal¹⁵.

Selection and juries. Filmmakers submit their films, which are followed by a selection procedure with the festival director holding final decision power over the selection and program³. Juries award the prizes, and their composition can itself draw criticism; the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, for example, faced complaints from Turkish filmmakers over the choice of jurors and the censorship of some films¹⁶.

The festival economy and recent pressures

The sheer number of events has created a quality problem. With more than 8,000 festivals a year, filmmakers and observers distinguish established, accredited events from low-selectivity festivals that charge submission fees and award laurels with little screening or audience; one industry service scores legitimacy and industry clout across more than 13,700 festivals, placing Cannes, Sundance, Berlin, Venice, and Toronto at the top¹^•¹⁷.

The relationship between festivals and Hollywood studios has also shifted. A running question through the 2026 festival year has been where the major studio movies are: Warner Bros. skipped the fall festivals in 2025 and launched Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another directly into theaters, and for the few adult-driven, non-franchise studio films that get made, an unpredictable critic response or an inconvenient release date has sometimes made festivals not worth the risk, as the producers of Joker: Folie à Deux, slammed at its 2024 Venice launch, learned¹⁸. Venice's 2026 edition opened amid criticism of low American representation and an almost complete absence of female directors in its competition¹⁹. At the same time, festivals continue to expand their industry functions: the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam presented 441 films from 92 countries, including 217 world premieres, alongside its IFFR Pro industry strand²⁰.

Festival studies

The academic field has grown alongside the events themselves. The anthologies of Dina Iordanova's Film Festival Yearbook, published from 2009 onward, have shifted the focus of festival studies beyond the Venice–Cannes–Berlin axis to other countries, regions, and emphases, addressing subjects ranging from the pre-history of European festivals to festival growth in Chile, "Film Weeks" in the People's Republic of China before 1966, and the colonial origins of the Hong Kong International Film Festival²¹.

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026