Hi

Although we don't have a lot of near neighbours on the web fest circuit, we do our best to keep up to speed with what's happening elsewhere, and love to see new festivals beginning and existing festivals introducing new initiatives.

We've loved seeing the reinvigorated social campaigns for Melbourne hitting our feeds recently, and we're especially happy to see a new festival. Korea's Yeosu International Webfest opened its doors for submissions to its first edition recently. The festival's first deadline is later this month. Submissions are free until their earlybird deadline hits! 

Apart from making new friends, we've got friends old and new among the early selections we're announcing this month - and good news of some of the people involved in titles from previous editions.

Enjoy

Team #NZWF24

COME ONE, COME ALL!

Every month until August, we roll out a few early selections. 

The following selections are chosen from all the submissions we received before 30 April. 

If your work is not named as an early selection, despair not! All titles submitted to us are in the selection mix until we announce our full programme in September. 

Congrats to all our early selections. There's no more need to bite your nails, and you can now do smugly self-satisfied happy dances,  

Let the applause ring out for ...

PODCASTS

Actual Play Audio title, Dread and Breakfast, built around horror RPG Dread, and Actual Play video title Clear Skies: Perseverance, a workplace dramedy set in the Star Trek universe.

Sarah Barker's short-form documentary audio series, VR: A Path to Mental Wellness

The deliciously twisted, darkly comic tales of Spiked Eggs, season 2 of Karin Heimdahl's Chaika (the first season was a finalist in our 2022 edition), and Alex Duncan's Hovering. 

SHORTS

Cecilia Low's Australian music video for Our Love, from the comedy web series SugarHope Records. 

Ben Wallbank's short NZ doco The Adventure of Racing

Two fiction shorts - Fredrick Pokai's NZ-made Search for Hawaiki and US student film See You Later from David Morrison and Joseph Knight. 

SERIES

The very first pilot we're announcing for 2024 - Jeremiah Chen's Singaporean show Living with an Expat 

Local factual series Te Ara (above) from Alexis Smith. 

Two French narrative series - Emilie Tommasi's The Gliwensbourg Chronicles and more Tutopique from Maurice Huvelin.

Congratulations to the teams behind all those titles.

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Our 2024 selections page is here. We'll keep adding the early selections as they're announced from now until September, so you can keep up to date with what's in (so far). 

Next month, we'll announce some more early selections, chosen from all the submissions received before our Regular deadline. Throw your hat, podcast, short film or web series in the ring at filmfreeway.com/nzwebfest

Good luck!

OUT & ABOUT

We're always happy to share news of success for shows we've enjoyed sharing with audiences here, and April was a busy month for announcements. 

Those with good memories will recall Luciane Buchanan (above), as one of the leads in Baby Mamas Club, which won half our Best Ensemble award at our fourth edition way back in 2018 (with Pot Luck taking the other half). Those with shorter memories should remember her from Netflix's most watched series of last year, The Night Agent. She'll be honoured in the US this weekend with an A100 award, which celebrate "impactful Asian Pacific leaders".

We were very happy to see the first WSWC rankings of the year in early April. Top of the pops were Historia Mal (Spain), The Gliwensbourg Chronicles (France) and Rent-a-pal (Spain). 2 NZ shows are currently in the top 10 rankings, Blind Bitter Happiness and K' Road Chronicles - both of which were winners at our 2023 edition. 

Two fests ran over the weekend, on the East and West coasts of the US, so with winners from LA (here) and Miami (here) now announced, we expect there'll be some changes when the next set of rankings comes out. We look forward to seeing who's leading the pack by then!

A winner with us in 2019 and 2023, K’ Road Chronicles will return for a fourth season - although probably not in time to slide on into this year's NZ Web Fest line-up. It recently picked up funding support from NZ On Air -  as did fellow Magnetic Productions show Breaking Silence. 

Congrats to all of them :)

MAY FOR MUSOS

To celebrate NZ Music Month, we've cut our submission fees for music videos, until 31 May. 

Get 50% off submission fees for NZ Music Videos at FilmFreeway by using the code GETDOWN24.

You can use the code more than once if you're keen. 

(Image: 2023 NZ award winner, Joe Murdie's MV for Gina Malcolm's Don't Expect the World.) 

ENJOY

 Our regular shout-out for content you might enjoy - suggested not by an algorithm or AI, but by real, breathing humans.

Build Your Own Universe was funded through NZ On Air's Every Voice initiative in partnership with TikTok to nurture emerging voices, The show's a series of short and light-hearted interviews with Takatapui and QTBIPOC artists in Aotearoa New Zealand. Watch on TikTok.

Season 2 of Untold Pacific History (above), season 1 of which won our Best NZ Factual Series award in 2021, is pretty much what it says on the tin - stories you may well not be familiar with - and bloody good. 

Dig in and enjoy! 

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We love to give shout-outs to new content in these newsletters and on our socials, but we don't have much time to trawl for it every month. 

If you're releasing something, be it something brand new or a new season, shamelessly self-promote by dropping us a line or adding admin@nzwebfest.co.nz to your media list if you're fancy and have one of those.

Tell us the what, when and where, and we'll help spread the word. We'll give preference to stuff that isn't geo-blocked or behind pay-walls, but all-comers are welcome :)

If we don't know, we can't share, so do tell us. Help us to help you!

LOOKING  FOR  LAURELS

If you're looking for some festival love and laurels, fill your boots :)

Opening later this month is Die Seriale, May 29 – June 3.

Festivals with deadlines coming up this month include ...

Stareable, 10 May, Regular Deadline

Panama, 15 May, Final Deadline

Toronto, 15 May, Regular Deadline

Yeosu, 26 May, Earlybird Deadline

Marseille, 31 May, Final Deadline

Minnesota, 31 May, Final Deadline  

NZ Web Fest, 31 May, Regular Deadline

Also open for submissions at present are

Apulia

Baltimore

Cinema Jove

Melbourne

New Jersey

Rio

Sydney

HELP  US  GROW

If you enjoy our monthly newsletters, but want info more than once every few weeks, please give our social channels a go (links are just below).

We post a few times a week, mostly to facebook and instagram. Our X is more podcast-focused than our other channels, and LinkedIn and Threads we only use occasionally.

We also have a linktree, which you can find here or access via our instagram bio.