Slamdance, the artist-led “by filmmakers for filmmakers” organization, today announced that its annual film festival will move to Los Angeles, starting in February 2025. The move to Los Angeles, the heart of the entertainment industry, will allow for the continued growth of Slamdance’s year-round mission to provide an accessible and dynamic community for truly independent, visionary filmmakers and creators.
The festival will run February 20-26, 2025 at venues in and surrounding Hollywood, including the Landmark Theatres and the DGA Theater Complex, with more locations to be announced. The festival aims to be financially accessible with in-person passes starting at $50.00 and many programs free to the public.
Existing and new programs will be featured at the festival, including Polytechnic, Slamdance’s free education endeavor; ‘6ixty’, a series of one-minute short films made on any format; Next Wave LA, a program of new media work made by LA-based artists, and the experiential and cutting-edge DIG (Digital, Interactive, Gaming) program.
Panasonic LUMIX will be the Official Sponsor of the 2025 Slamdance Film Festival in Los Angeles, solidifying a partnership at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and independent filmmaking. Additional industry partners include the DGA, Landmark Theatres, and AGBO.
The Slamdance Film Festival is a yearly celebration of emerging filmmaking talent from around the world. The 2024 lineup consisted of 113 films, 17 of which were World Premiere features. 2024 was Slamdance’s most diverse lineup, with 43% of the films by BIPOC creators and 43% by female or non-binary filmmakers. All films selected in the Narrative Features and Documentary Features competition categories are directorial debuts without U.S. distribution, with budgets of less than USD 1 million – a feature that has been unique to the festival since its founding in 1995. The features hailed from 20 different countries, including Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Greece, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, Palestine, Russia, and the UK (United Kingdom) among others.
Submissions for the Slamdance 2025 Film Festival will open on May 8, 2024.
Select Slamdance features, shorts, and episodics can be viewed year-round on the Slamdance Channel.
