Cyberpunk Now Film Festival
Cyberpunk Now Film Festival

Film Festival Overview

What Is The Cyberpunk Now Film Festival?

The Cyberpunk Now Film Festival is a “live” film festival. You make your films during the festival, not before. We like this because it’s more like a hackathon.

Cyberpunk is a speculative fiction literary genre that became popular in the 1980s and 90s. Authors like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling, and others made predictions about what life would be like in the near future, around the year 2000 and just beyond. Oh, hey… that’s NOW!

When does it start?

The festival starts on Saturday, July 25th.

How does the festival work?

We publish Rules on the website, but there are missing pieces until the first day of the event, so everyone starts from the same place. We call these secret sequestered rules the Required Challenge Elements. They will show up on the website at around 12pm EDT on July 25th, the first day of HOPE.

You can brainstorm and organize all you want, but no one can make a film in advance because they don’t know what all the rules are going to be. The ticking clock may be your biggest challenge.

What is HOPE?

HOPE is the Hackers On Planet Earth Conference 2020. We are running our programs concurrently. The first day of HOPE 2020 is the first day of Cyberpunk Now, and the last day of HOPE is the day we announce our festival winners. If you have a HOPE 2020 ticket, then you can submit an entry for Cyberpunk Now at no charge. If you don’t have a HOPE 2020 ticket you can still participate in Cyberpunk Now, but there is an entry fee to submit your project for judging. The fee is per team, not per person, and smaller teams and students get a discount. We use a submission platform called FilmFreeway, where you will upload your project and the judges will screen and score the films.

What do we do?

Put a team together. Participants will have 5 days to team up, brainstorm, cast, shoot, edit, polish, and upload by the deadline on July 30th. Definitely read the Rules thoroughly. All of this and more is in there. It’s important to read the Rules.

How many people are participating?

We don’t know yet. This is the first Cyberpunk Now Film Festival. More people is more fun, so please help spread the word!

How do people see our film?

We will be posting all of the projects on YouTube for one month and will have an index of the submissions here on the website. The winners will also be screened in a live stream. Watch the website for screening information, and we’ll also be posting screening info on the festival’s Discord server.

When do we find out if we won?

We will have a live stream presentation of the six main category winners (Animation, Comedy, Drama, Educational, Experimental, and Found Footage) on the morning of August 2nd, the final day of HOPE 2020. Winners will be screened as they are announced in the stream. The winners of the Most Cyberpunk award and the Grand Prize will be announced during the Closing Ceremonies of HOPE 2020 in a public live stream that begins at 1800 EDT on August 2nd, the same day the challenge category winners are announced.