Grigory Lukin.com

Ever since my early retirement four years ago, I’ve been trying to have one big theme, one grand adventure per year. Last year, it was my quest for a literary agent: that one took a while, and required writing a whole new novel on top of the existing one, but it finally worked. (I’m very very happy to be represented by Brandy Vallance of the Barbara Bova Literary Agency.)

This year… Well, this year is going to be even more ambitious. About a year ago, I made my first-ever short film, Please Don’t Send Help. I created it using NASA’s archival footage, a $15 budget, and a whole lot of editing, which I learned on the fly. (Pro tip: DaVinci Resolve is amazing free software!) That got me into the Brookly SciFi Film Festival in, well, Brooklyn in October 2024, and then a much bigger festival, Dam Short Film Festival in Nevada just a few months ago. And now I’m hooked, eh.

The theme for this coming year will be “never-ending film fest party.” I’ve made a few more short films since my first one: How to Prepare for Time Travelers in the Workplace, So Long and Thanks for All the Bandwidth, Species Spotlight: Humans, and Drive Me to the Moon. (Good titles are very important!) The last one is my secret weapon, which I’ll try to send out to the biggest festivals of them all. I used the other three, along with Please Don’t Send Help, as part of my shotgun approach to film festival applications: I submitted those four at the same time in hopes that at least one of them will get their sci-fi curator’s attention. And if they don’t – well, life goes on.

Below is the full list of festivals I’ve submitted my films to thus far. My main criteria were reputation, vibes, and hospitality. (There are some small-ish fests on this list that nonetheless have a stellar reputation.) I’ll revisit this post in about a year, once everything is done. I’m sharing my list in the interest of full disclosure: if any other newbie filmmaker is reading this, I hope they’ll find my strategy helpful!

These film submissions ranged in price from free to $50 per film, and I’m not gonna lie – this cost me a pretty penny. However, a) if this works as planned, then I’ll spend the entirety of October and March bouncing from one amazing party to another, and b) if I get in, there’s usually an alumni discount (i.e., no need to pay the submission fee again in the future), and c) this is an adventure, eh!

I don’t expect to get into all 100% of those (though it’d be neat to get into the one in Finland: Quebec sponsors their filmmakers’ flight to that one!), but I think I have a fair chance with quite a few of them. Time will show how this grand project will play out: hubris, glory, a bit of both? We’ll see.

And so:

And now I wait… Yesterday, the first of these festivals got back to me: ReadingFilmFest has accepted Please Don’t Send Help, so I know where I’ll be around October 10th! One down, 26 to go, woooo!