International Vegan Film Festival 2024 Is Open to New Submissions
The International Vegan Film Festival 2024, to be held in Toronto in November, is open to new submissions of films and social media reels made from 2022 to 2024. The deadline is June 30th, 2024.
Los Angeles, June 22nd, 2024 — In the third decade of the 21st century, there is no better way to reach the masses than with videos and films. The vegan movement, being a progressive movement looking at the future, knows this very well. This is why the International Vegan Film Festival (IVFF) exists. It acknowledges the pioneering work of the many filmmakers building a vegan world one documentary, movie, or social media video at a time. IVFF is currently accepting new submissions, including social media reels.
Submit Your Vegan Film Now!
UnchainedTV is thrilled to be collaborating with IVFF to stream films from the festival. IVFF’s new Executive Director Emma Schwarz, and Mark Middleton, a vegan director/producer and maker of the short film Not a Nugget, joined UnchainedTV’s Jane Velez-Mitchell to talk about this unique festival. You can watch the conversation here:
The International Vegan Film Festival Offers Opportunities for All Sorts of Content Creators
Emma Schwarz is an award-winning filmmaker, photographer, author, and dedicated vegan activist. In addition to her role as the Executive Director of the International Vegan Film Festival, Schwarz is the Co-Founder and CEO of Veganography, a film production and media company dedicated to creating content that inspires the public to embrace the vegan lifestyle and empowers vegans in their own activism. Veganography specializes in 3D animation, creating uniquely engaging content that advocates for a kinder world for all. Veganography’s films have received multiple awards, and have been featured on prominent media platforms such as PBS. This is what Schwarz says about the International Vegan Film Festival which has been held in Toronto, Canada, since 2018:
“We usually get around 50 films submitted every year. Then, at the annual festival, we usually screen around 10 to 15. However, we also present awards in eight different categories to films that are not able to be screened at the film festival because of time constraints. We try to make the festival as interactive as possible for our audience. We really want it to be a very inspiring experience.”
Submit Your Social Media Reel
This year, the IVFF has a new development that will excite those video content creators who have just started their careers, as Schwarz explains:
“The most exciting new development is that we’re now accepting social media reels as a category in our festival because we truly believe that social media is an absolute art form that deserves recognition. Social media is where most people get their information nowadays, so we want to recognize the creators who are reaching vast audiences through social media because it is the center of modern content consumption and animal activism.”
Documentaries Are Key to Changing People’s Minds
Mark L. Middleton is a long-time animal advocate applying his background in art and technology to making films about animals. He has been vegan for 19 years and serves on the board of The Humane League. Over the years he has supported many animal organizations as a donor and volunteer. Mark made the short film Not a Nugget, contributed to Common Enemy, and is currently working on a feature documentary about chickens raised for meat. Click below to watch Not A Nugget now. It’s less than 7 minutes and not graphic. It tells the compelling story of one individual, who just happens to be a chicken.
Middleton describes how he came to make this short film in 2022 and why he did it.
“‘Not a Nugget’ is a student film that I made in six weeks at the USC Documentary Summer Program, and it’s kind of a practice film for a larger project about chickens that I’m working on. My goal was to put chickens in the context of companion animals. In the film, I relate the chicken to my dog and my cat that I had at the time, and show that chickens are really intelligent, sensitive animals who are really misunderstood and very underestimated.”
Middleton is one of the filmmakers who submitted his work to the International Vegan Film Festival, which still accepts submissions of films made in 2022, 2023, or 2024. He explains how important documentaries are for the vegan movement:
“There’s both anecdotal evidence and data that documentaries really do affect people. I just personally have talked to so many people who have said that they made a change in their diet because of a documentary that they saw. Several years ago, there was a study that asked people what sorts of interactions influenced them to make positive changes in their diet towards vegetarianism or veganism, and documentaries were one of the top things that people mentioned changed their minds.”
“If we can inspire that connection and that love in people, that’s how we’re going to shift perspectives and, ultimately, shift the global supply chain.” — Emma Schwarz, IVFF
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