Policies on Screening Fees and Submission Fees

A hand holding up a beaded medallion that says "Asinabka".

Asinabka Festival is committed to paying industry-standard artists fees for all of our events and programming. Without artists, and the work produced by artists, our festival could not exist, and we aim to support the Indigenous film community by presenting work, but also by providing artist fees. Specifically, we adhere to, and aim to surpass, the minimum recommended fee schedules updated and released annually by CARFAC and IMAA.

Since our very first year, we’ve endeavoured to make our festival as open and accessible as possible. We’ve always seen submission fees as a barrier for many artists, such as emerging, youth, and low-income artists, and as such, we have never required a fee for filmmakers to submit their work to our festival. The small exception to this rule, is that we do require a small one-dollar fee for films submitted through our Film Freeway platform. The reason for this, is that it significantly reduces the number of ineligible submissions that we would otherwise get on that platform. If this small fee is barrier, filmmakers can email us to request a waiver code on that platform. Submissions can also be made to us directly through email, and this as always has no charge.

We encourage everyone that meets the eligibility requirements of our annual call for submissions, to submit their work to our festival. Every film submitted to the Asinabka Festival goes through a thoughtful review process by our jury selection committee. Our jury is comprised of the festival programmers, as well as a invited members of the local Indigenous arts scene who assist in the decision making process.