u/aart-hus

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share something I've been building for filmmakers: CircKit.

circkit.io

Quick bit about me so you know where this comes from. I'm Dylan - a producer, an NFTS graduate and a 2024 BBC Film Scholar, and my films have screened at festivals like BFI London, BFI Flare and Raindance. Have also helped friends' with their strategies get into Cannes, Edinburgh and other festivals - both for shorts and features. So I've been through the submission grind from the filmmaker side, spreadsheets, FilmFreeway tabs, second-guessing every entry fee, the lot.

I built Circkit because festival strategy is expensive, confusing and mostly guesswork. You either pay hundreds for a strategy service that turns out to be a copy-and-paste list, or you wing it and hope. I wanted something that actually looks at your specific film and builds a run around it. I also really wanted to protect filmmaker data (including screenplays), so we never sell data.

Here is what it does:

• Matches festivals to your film, not to prestige. It weighs fit, taste, format and eligibility rather than handing you the ten most famous festivals every film gets rejected from. A grounded regional drama and a genre short should not get the same list.
• It matches your film to the people choosing the films, not just the festival name. Most tools stop at the festival. Circkit looks at the programmers and the jury, their taste, what they have championed before, the kind of work that actually gets through, and builds your list around who is in the room.
• Sizes your whole run. It works out how many festivals to target and splits them into reach, target and likely, so you are building a real campaign and not a wishlist.
• Plans everything in one place. Shortlists, submission deadlines, entry-fee budgeting, premiere status and eligibility, all tracked as you go.
• Awards-qualifying pathways. It shows you the routes that actually feed into things like the Oscars and BAFTA, so a qualifying festival win is not something you find out about too late.
• Real, current data. Thousands of festivals with fees and deadlines we keep fresh, because nothing wastes money like submitting on last year's information. We vet this carefully.
• Deadline reminders and calendar sync. It tracks early-bird, regular and late windows and syncs your run into Google Calendar or any calendar, so you never miss a window or overpay on a late fee.
• A proper press kit builder. It builds you a clean EPK, and it can export in English, French and Spanish for international festivals.
• Invite your team for free. Add your producer, editor or sales agent as a viewer or editor on a film at no extra cost, so everyone is working off the same plan.
• Your data stays yours. It is GDPR compliant, you can export your data at any time, and it never submits to a festival on your behalf without you. You stay in control of every entry.

Two things I want to be straight about, because this sub can smell a pitch a mile off:

The first film you add is free, no card needed, so you can see whether the strategy preview (first few cards) is any good before you spend anything. And it is pay-once, not a subscription, because I did not want to build another thing that sneakily bills filmmakers every month.

It is still early (Open Beta right now) and there's plenty I want to improve, so I would genuinely value feedback from other filmmakers, programmers and festival people. If you think the matching is wrong for a certain kind of film, or there is data we are getting wrong, tell me, that is exactly the stuff I want to hear.

Happy to answer anything in the comments.

EDIT:
Made an edit to the line regarding data. We use Anthropic as part of our backend but we never sell user data or share it - including your screenplays etc. This is all protected.