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CALLING ALL COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS TO SUBMIT THEIR FILMS TO BIFF’S nexGEN FILM COMPETITION!

BERKSHIRE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL CELEBRATES 19 YEARS WITH A NEW INITIATIVE TO CELEBRATE COLLEGE STUDENT FILMMAKERS!

Calling all college and university student filmmakers! The Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) and Love Today Productions (LTP) announces a new initiative supporting emerging filmmakers. The “nexGen Film Competition” is open to students across the U.S to encourage the work of the next generation of talented young filmmakers. The competition aims to discover emerging student filmmakers and provide them a platform at an international film festival. BIFF and LTP aim to highlight students’ talents at a festival setting and provide them with mentoring and potential job opportunities in a tough industry. Three filmmakers will be chosen from the submissions and will each receive a cash prize of $2500, mentoring from an acclaimed filmmaker, and an invitation to attend the BIFF as our guest at the end of May 2025.

BIFF and LTP aim to help students use their film as their calling card for a career in the independent film industry. We also want to provide them a platform not only to showcase their talents, but also attend our Filmmaker Summit to meet and network with professionals in the film business prior to the film festival.

We encourage experimentation and diverse storytelling approaches, welcoming not only fiction but also documentary and poetry. We’re particularly interested in unique visual languages and fresh ways of engaging audiences. We’re eager to discover students who are curious about the medium, willing to play with it, and ready to challenge the boundaries of film.

The competition is open NOW until March 10 to all film students currently in a U.S. university or college. Submissions are free of entry fees through FilmFreeway – nexGen Student Film Competition

BIFF will present the three award winners with a cash prize of $2500. The award-winning films will be presented at the 2025 film festival held May 29 – June 1 along with the filmmakers in attendance. The competition is generously sponsored by Love Today Productions.

Films requirements for submission:

  • MUST be produced and directed by a student who is attending a college or university in the US
  • MUST be shorter than 12 minutes
  • MUST be completed by March 31, 2025
  • MUST own or have cleared all rights of the submitted materials, including music

For more information, contact the BIFF Office – kelley@biffma.org, anne@biffma.org, lauren@biffma.org

Enter Competition

The Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) is for filmmakers and film lovers alike to be entertained, educated and inspired.

BIFF celebrates independent film and recognizes and pays tribute to accomplished artists on both sides of the camera in the international, national and regional film community. We provide filmmakers, producers, directors, writers and actors an environment to collaborate, present their work, and interact with each other and with film audiences. Our priorities are to showcase the most challenging and topically relevant documentaries each year and provide a platform for Berkshire filmmakers.

We have honored or had special events with Arthur Penn, Kevin Bacon, Philippe Petit, Kathleen Kennedy, Patricia Clarkson, Douglas Trumbull, Marina Abramovic, Gregory Crewdson, Darlene Love, Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach, Yo-Yo Ma, Sheila Nevins, Mariel Hemingway, John Landis, Karen Allen, Bruce Dern, Paul Krugman, Darlene Love, Conrad Anker, John Carroll Lynch, Kent Jones, Charles Randolph, Christopher Plummer,  Rachel Weisz, Alfre Woodard, Ruth Reichl, Stephen Lang and Martin Scorsese.