What Short Filmmakers Actually Need to Know: Cannes Panel Breaks Down the Real Path to Visibility

At the American Pavilion during this year's Cannes Film Festival, IndieWire hosted a panel as part of its "What No One Tells You" series — the Cannes edition — and the conversation was exactly what the title promises: the stuff nobody puts in a press release.

The panel brought together Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh, co-directors of the Oscar-winning short *Two People Exchanging Saliva*; Grégoire Féron and Emilie Boulay, shorts specialists at international distribution company Salaud Morisset; and Taylor K. Shaw-Omachonu, Head of Film Strategy at Kickstarter. Topics ranged from festival strategy and distribution to streaming sales and audience-building — the full practical infrastructure (or lack thereof) that short filmmakers have to navigate.

One of the more candid threads running through the discussion was just how different the short film market is from features, and not always in ways that favor the filmmaker. Singh was direct about where the money actually comes from: "The festival circuit is where the film will have its life. It'll meet its first audiences. Hopefully, other programmers will see it. It'll start to get a little buzz. Maybe you will be able to sell the film in a territory, such as in France, which still pays for films, whereas getting a U.S. streamer to buy a short film is rarer."

That word — rarer — is doing a lot of work. Not impossible, but not a plan.

Musteata and Singh's own film is an interesting case study in how these challenges compound. At 36 minutes, *Two People Exchanging Saliva* was simply too long for many major festivals to program. That's not a creative judgment — it's a logistical one. Féron explained it plainly: "I see the difference when a film is longer, because short films are programmed in blocks of four to six films, and a 30- or 40-minute-long film might take the slot of two shorts."

The film's break came when Barry Jenkins selected it as one of seven shorts screened at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival. That kind of curatorial endorsement — from a filmmaker with Jenkins' profile — can reframe what a short is capable of.

Féron also broke down what a "festival distributor" actually does, a role that's often misunderstood or invisible to first-time short filmmakers. "A festival distributor is the person who's going to take care of the distribution of the film on the festival circuit. The thing is, there are a lot of festivals that require a lot of time, energy, and network-building, and they make a huge difference for a film. The strategy is very important to build." Salaud Morisset's stated mission, per Boulay, is straightforward: "Our goal is to really give as much visibility as possible to short films and bring them to as many large audiences as possible."

On the submission side, Musteata offered advice that sounds obvious but apparently isn't followed often enough: apply early. "You need to apply to film festivals when they open, not in the middle, not at the end. Because if a programmer loves your film, they will program around it, and they will create a group of films that is in response to your film. Whereas if you're applying in the middle or in the end, you now need to be slotted into the program of a different film or a different theme."

Shaw-Omachonu's contribution shifted the focus to audience infrastructure, and her take on social media was notably skeptical. "For shorts, the way that you build an audience is to start with creating a mailing list. Your social media following does not actually matter. What matters is that you know that you have an engaged audience that includes people that know you that will support you."

The full panel video is available to watch via IndieWire. For anyone making short films right now — or planning to — it's worth the time.

[Original Source](https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/short-film-advice-festivals-sales-distribution-1235196306/)