After months of waiting for a series of consecutive letdowns, the final nail in the coffin came to me via email a few weeks ago. It was worded like all the others, almost as though each festival that declined to screen my film had, with a chilly sort of efficiency, shared the same form letter. The language of rejection is likely familiar to a lot of filmmakers these days, and it is becoming increasingly so to me as well. But I have to confess, the repetition of the letdown does little to lessen the sting.

Flaccid conciliatory phrases such as “we appreciate you taking the time and energy to send your film to us for consideration” and “we recognize that the selection process is subjective and is not a reflection on the quality of your work” which do little to assuage anyone’s disappointment, are becoming the expected, and even inevitable, line of response. The film festivals, and other systemic arbiters in the world of filmmaking, now almost universally offer the same frustrated, rationalizing cry: there are just too damn many of you. This is evidenced most clearly in the rejection emails by the repeated mention of the staggering quantity of other submissions received with yours. Reading these notifications, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by a certain cynicism.

Having done the research before making submissions of my second feature film, Choch, I knew that our odds weren’t good, especially given the limits of my own personal resources. As most veterans know, a multiplicity of submissions is essential to achieving even a long shot of success on the circuit. For my film, it just wasn’t possible, despite the best efforts of our 24 incredibly generous IndieGogo backers who gave me an initial opportunity to get in the game. Like participating in any game of chance, the more you can play, the greater the odds that you’ll eventually win something. It is this unfortunate mathematical reality that turns the film festival competition into one of increasingly high stakes, excluding new players who have a smaller pool of resources to draw from.

Most filmmakers, but very few attendees, are aware that submission fees across the board are totally out of control. Festival executives insist that the fees are an unfortunate operational reality, and on that point I begrudgingly agree. What I think the festivals have yet to recognize, is that although the fees are a logical solution to a real problem, they are an existential threat to the festivals’ ability to fulfill their mandates. Film festivals cannot purport to act in the service of filmmakers, particularly the young and truly independent ones, and continue to charge these exorbitant submission fees. This is an operational policy of exclusion in serious conflict with a founding principle of inclusivity for marginalised and underprivileged artists that, until recently, could perhaps have been argued to live in equilibrium with one another. But not anymore.

A paltry number of festivals offer a digital screener submission option, necessitating the additional cost of snail-mailed DVDs and Blu-ray screeners to various far off places. The obvious immediate consequence of this, again, is to decrease the odds of the small players. But the more implicit restriction of physical delivery is that it makes the North American festival market, which is considerably more commercial and heavily privatized than its European counterpart, an even more favoured destination for Canadian and American filmmakers because of the lessened expense at the post office, not to mention potential travel costs if you actually make it in. The logical effect of this systemic constraint, on the art itself, is that films which do not as closely subscribe to the values of American cinema (the ones already likely to be marginalised) are excluded to a larger degree than might be likely if they were able to be considered by a foreign audience. For evidence of the hegemonic influence of commercial cinema on the major American festivals, watch a random sample of films from the dramatic competition at Sundance in the last decade.

What I’ve been most surprised by in my own experience and my research so far, is that this truth is hardly a secret. The conventional wisdom seems to be very pessimistic, bordering on defeatist. Most people in the community, both the creatives and their supposed allies, admit that the festival system is exactly what I described earlier: a game of chance. Submitting to film festivals is like playing in a casino, where you gamble money that could probably be better spent somewhere else, in the hopes that you might defy the odds and win big. Sure, strategy is involved to a minor degree, but by and large the game is qualitatively indiscriminate and based largely on chance. Everyone who knows the numbers, the quantity of films being submitted to festivals every year, is also aware of how absolutely infinitesimal the odds are.

No serious person can look at these odds and say that the festival casino is a wise bet, that laying down serious cash to play this game is a good investment. This is especially true for people playing with their own money, or with money raised from benevolent crowdfunders, as a lot of young filmmakers (myself included) are. Even the festival programmers, by pointing out the futility of their task in their rejection letters by mentioning the plethora of content they have to sift through, and by explicitly admitting that your film’s exclusion may be no indicator of its quality, also admit the fallacy of the process and their inevitable failure before they even begin.

You can hear the sad resignation from all manners of film professionals at the various panels and conferences hosted by festivals and other gatherings. They communally recognize that they can’t do enough, and that the old system in the new media environment is incapable of functioning the way it used to, and more importantly, the way it desperately needs to. From the perspective of the increasingly cash-strapped filmmaker, there is also growing consciousness of the overall absurdity of paying an organization to please consider maybe screening your film to an audience that may or may not show up anyway.

Am I bitter? Fuck yes I’m bitter, and I’m pissed off too. Today I actually intended to sit down and write a letter apologizing to the cast and crew of the film for letting them down. I have to confess to my friends and backers who supported Choch’s festival push on IndieGogo that we failed, and that their hopes for me and for the film were ultimately for naught. I don’t think that I personally deserved better than anyone else who faces this kind of rejection, but I do know these wonderful people who supported me deserved better. Disappointing them is what really makes me bitter and pissed off.

Perhaps what this letter has evolved into, part diatribe and part meditation on the way things in the film world are, can serve as both my confession and my apology to the supporters of my film and the people who created it with me. I hope, if they are reading this now, that they believe Choch was worth making and worth supporting, and they know that it can have meaning—and it does have meaning—no matter what the system says. Even if we didn’t win big playing in the casino, we can still make a fortune the old fashion way. Over a long time, with a bit of effort, and a lot of help from some friends like you.

So what does this mean? It means I reject the idea that film festivals are or should be the default destination for an independent filmmaker. It means it’s time to stop just cultivating the democratic distribution and exhibition alternatives and start embracing them completely. No more cooperation with this system that cannot—and does not—serve long term creative interests. No more having faith in the cultural meaning that this system attempts to write.

It means that a year after our self-programmed theatrical debut of Choch at the now defunct Uptown Stage & Screen in Calgary, I am proudly releasing the film online via an innovative distribution platform called Distrify. With Distrify, we are able to offer an instantly watchable HD stream of the film, a download HD copy of the film to watch and share whenever you want in whatever way you want, and a limited edition DVD copy of the film with bonus features.

The best part is that with Distrify, you can get paid to help spread the word about our movie. Every time you share our Distrify video widget on your website, blog, or social network, you will receive 30% of whatever revenue we accrue from people buying and renting the film from that widget. Now you can get paid to support independent film simply through the click of a few buttons. All we want is for you to give other people the opportunity to see the movie and judge for themselves.

I leave whatever meaning that potentially exists for my little movie in the hands of the people that matter the most, the audience who chooses to watch it.

Much love and thanks.