Dreams meet reality: Our first film festival rejection

August 18, 2011

I was in Portland Oregon visiting Tanya for some business meetings, when we received our first word back from film festivals. We were sitting down, chatting after a long day when Tanya, who was checking her email at the same time, suddenly went quiet. I was joking around with her that we needed a break from “Blue” and that she’d better not be working on it. Her face was blank. “Hold on” she said as she stared at her computer screen and clicked around on her mouse. There was a moment of silence until the words, “we didn’t get in” shattered the peaceful evening.

“What?” I ran over to check for myself, and sure enough, we didn’t get into our first film festival. It was a student film festival, and we had high hopes of getting into it. We went over the list of accepted films over and over, double-checking to make sure our film wasn’t misplaced or we just missed it somewhere. But our dread turned into reality, we were not among the semi-finalists for the festival.

Now don’t get me wrong, we went into this festival run knowing that we would be accepted to only a small percentage of what we submitted to. But lets face it, the first rejection still stings. Tanya and I took the next several minutes talking about film, expectations, God, and success.  We concluded that while awards from festivals are nice, impacting lives with our film will overall be more rewarding. God has already placed this film into the hands of some amazing people who want to see this film take flight. So, then there is no need in a time like this to feel down or defeated over a rejection. Now is the time to rejoice and know that this film was meant to bring hope to people, and that is exactly where the film is headed.

-Kristine

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