Festival Success Stories: Martin Garde Abildgaard
Martin Garde Abildgaard | Illustration: Frankie Stewart
Interviewed & edited by Mark Brennan
Edited by Kate Stocker-Wright
There are many differences between a festival run for a short film and one for a feature film, and Festival Formula client Martin Abildgaard has experienced both with us - his short Lovebirds and feature A Beautiful Curse.
Martin’s experience with his feature was made all the more interesting by the film’s world premiere and festival run taking place at the height of the pandemic.
The film festival circuit is a fickle and inconsistent beast. Festival Formula exists to help filmmakers navigate its choppy waters. Examples of this can be your film getting into festivals/programmes you don’t expect.
While Martin Garde Abildgaard had some experience of the festival circuit submitting music videos in the past, the subjectivity of festivals is something that was demonstrated with his short film Lovebirds.
“I had a great meeting with Festival Formula, talking about the strategy and the expectations of this little film, and we talked about the categories in which it could be programmed. One of the best festivals we were at was the Newport Beach Festival in the US, where Lovebirds was actually programmed in the comedy category. That was so funny to me because, while it had dark humour, I thought I had made a drama!”
As Lovebirds made its way across the circuit, playing at Academy Award qualifying festivals Athens International Film & Video, Cleveland International and Indy Shorts, Martin was already hard at work on his feature A Beautiful Curse. Having experienced a short film on the circuit, what were his hopes for his feature?
“I really loved working with Festival Formula for Lovebirds, Katie also watched A Beautiful Curse and I could really feel that she loved the movie. We started talking about expectations and, of course, she knows the market really well. We talked about which festivals we should aim for with a film like this, and then it was just amazing that we were picked for Cinequest. We also won the Grand Jury Prize, so that was just a blast.”
Despite A Beautiful Curse being selected for nearly 20 film festivals around the world, because of the pandemic, Martin has yet to attend a screening in person. However a lot of positive virtual experiences occurred.
“Cinequest was a really good virtual experience, for instance, they were really good at putting people together. On the virtual platform they used the filmmakers were extremely open and so different. People doing documentaries, short documentaries, comedies, it was really random. We were able to present our films to each other, so it made it really personal.”
Despite a great virtual run, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. As well as not being able to physically attend festivals, Martin also had to wait longer than he would have liked for that first selection to come and, of course, experience his share of festival rejections too.
“Waiting to be selected to the first festival with the feature was, of course, the hardest part. I think the best thing was not to take it personally. Most festivals receive 3000+ feature submissions and they need to make each year special. It's a bouquet of flowers they need to put together. If they have a film in one direction, they then need one in another. Now when we receive rejections from a festival, I just delete the email and move on to the next one.”
Success has many different faces on the festival circuit, but Martin eagerly expresses that with every selection it is paramount to engage with the festival.
“The first thing I do when we get selected to festivals is to sign up with the festival newsletter and connect with them on social media, do interviews, do Q&As, and always connect with a contact person.”
“It's really important not to focus on stuff like, ‘How big is this festival? How important is it? Am I in competition?’ You just need to be there for all the festivals. It's a collaboration between filmmakers and festivals.”
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