Hi 

If this has just dropped into your inbox on Tuesday morning (at least in NZ, possibly earlier elsewhere), that's good news for us. We've been successful in shifting email provider.

If you got a warning that it might be spam, but ventured on anyway, thanks :) 

We're not spam (hopefully you agree!) and we also hope you'll enjoy this and many future editions of the newsletter. 

We're in that pleasant space at the mo where we're accepting submissions, but aren't yet far enough down the road towards our final deadline that we need to start worrying about how we'll squeeze so many great podcasts, shorts and series into the line-up. 

So, for now, this is a very good place - and we're savouring it. 

We've cherry-picked a few submissions from the growing pile and today we announce them as early selections for #NZWF23. Find them, and a boatload of other stuff, below. 

 
Team #NZWF23

The ninth editions of the Web Series World Cup and the inaugural edition of the Audio Fiction World Cup are both off and running, and we're looking forward to seeing the early rankings. 

The WSWC recently posted a list of the festivals currently confirmed for 2023. 

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Congrats to all the shows nominated for the Canadian Screen Awards, but special congrats to the shows we've had the pleasure of presenting at NZ Web Fest - Avocado Toast, Detention Adventure, Sloppy Jones, Tokens and Topline. 

Even specialer congrats go to Detention Adventure (above), which achieved a whopping 15 nominations. Good luck to all the shows for the award ceremonies, which run in April.

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Tokens was also among the winners at the recent Cusco Web Fest, taking away the Best International Series award. Sticking with Cusco, their direct selection from us, Taylor Nixon's Roadie, won Cusco's Best Pilot award. 

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Congrats, too, to Nir Berger, whose dramedy series Dead End won our Best Animated Show award in 2020. Season 2 of Nir's Dismissed has picked up a huge 16 nominations for the Israeli TV Academy Awards, after season 1 won 10 awards last year.

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Coming in late March, the International Online Web Fest has named its finalists, with a few of our recent selections, nominees and winners in the mix. Good luck to Outtake's Block Watch and Kith & Kin, to Dating Unlocked, Frapuccino and NZ short film Ink and Gold.

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Stareable has opened ticket sales for its LA edition, running 28-30 April. The current ticket price of $24 will get you a whole weekend's worth of goodness in LA, which could be the best offer you'll get this year.

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If you’ve got a short that fits the theme – or can turn one around by the 10 March deadline – the government of Korea and Transparency International have a competition open ahead of the summit for democracy in Seoul next month. 

Winners get a free trip to Korea! 

This month, there's a grab-bag of info below on our own podcast categories, but we'll start overseas. 

Congrats to Jeff Stormer, who's joined Minnesota Web Fest to look after their podcast categories. Jeff won our Actual Play award last year for his podcast Party of One, so we'd imagine there are a few podcasters happy he's not competing this time around!

Here at home, we're very lucky to have Jacq Ellem (above) joining us to head up the podcast part of the festival, and make our podcast categories as good as they can be. How lucky we are!

Jacq was with us in person at #NZWF22, and won the Best Writing award in our fiction podcast categories for her Tales From Three Corners (which was also won at the NZ Podcast Awards last year).

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Here's a quick reminder of what's what with our podcast categories ...

Our fiction categories are for series podcasts and standalone radio plays, and selections will qualify for ranking points in the inaugural edition of the Audio Fiction World Cup. 

Also picking up ranking points for the Cup are Actual Play podcasts. Some festivals accept video entries for their Actual Play podcast category. We don't accept video submission in any of our podcast categories. 

Our non-fiction categories don't pick up Audio Fiction World Cup points, but selections do qualify for our own awards - and we'll have more award categories for podcasts this year.

So, whether your podcast's in the biz of telling truth or lies, we've got you :) 

If you've got any questions about submissions, get in touch with us at [email protected] - and please remember that our Earlybird deadline arrives before our next newsletter will, so don't hang around!

It's never over until it's over, and in mid-Feb we were very happy to tick off one of the few remaining bits of biz from our 2022 edition. 

Samantha Wan, director of Shannon Fewster's Canadian show Lady Ada's Secret Society and a member of one of our Creator Convo panels last November, visited NZ last month. 

It was a treat to meet her, and to hand over the trophy for Lady Ada's Best Ensemble win in person. 

If you didn't catch Lady Ada's during our festival, you can check out the trailer - and then jump on the full series, which starts here.

We've previously noted the shows coming to us as part of swap arrangements with Web Series World Cup partner festivals.

We're excited to add one more to that list now ... Love La Serie, coming to us from Peru's Cusco Web Fest, which ran in late February.

Now, we're into the business of starting to make our own selection decisions. 

From the podcasts, shorts and shows which came into us during February, we're pleased to say we're announcing these early selections. Drum roll, please ...

Podcasts: The Endless Elsewhere and Savage Waking

Short Films: Woman and Canadian MV Still Fighting 

Web Series: factual show Joey Skaggs and narrative show Tokens (above) - both of which also played previous editions of NZ Web Fest - plus local show Find Where I Belong, a recent winner in Tahiti at FIFO.

Congratulations to the teams behind all those titles. Let the happy dances begin! 

We'll add some more early selections next month, after our Earlybird submissions close on 31 March ... and, if your coffee's not yet kicked in, that was a hint! 

For everyone else who submitted work to us in February, don't panic! Your submission is still very much in the running, right up until our full line-ups are announced in September.

We've now updated the Selections page on our website, so you can check out the podcasts, series and shorts confirmed so far here.

Back in 2016, Josh Hall & Matt Earle were finalists at our second edition with their series Blading NZ. They repeated that feat in 2018 with Misadventures and again in 2019 with The Josh & Mearle Diaries. 

They've recently released a new doco, Underneath Waiheke (watch it on YouTube here).

Passing 50K+ views on facebook in its first 2 weeks, it got off to a good start, and its marketing makes a pretty good case study - which is handy as that's exactly what Matt presents here. It offers some great how-to tips for first-timers and refreshers for the non-virgins. 

Other recently-released local shows we'd also recommend are Sik Fan Lah (don't watch it when you're hungry) and Dating While Asian - as well as our Best NZ Factual winner from last year, Hair Now, which is currently getting another push in the form of a street poster campaign (above).

In 2019, Jazz Thornton's Jessica's Tree won one of our Factual awards. She's just launched a new podcast, Hope Is Real, which is fighting the good fight in all those places you find your new fave podcasts. 

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We'd love to give more shout-outs to new content in these newsletters and on our socials - wherever it's from - but we don't have much time to trawl for it every month. So, we've decided to make that your problem! 

If you're releasing something, be it brand new or (for series and podcasts) a new season, drop us a line or add [email protected] to your media list if you're really fancy and have one of those.

Tell us what, when and where your stuff's releasing, and we'll do the honours. We'll give preference to stuff that isn't geo-blocked or behind pay-walls, but all-comers are welcome :)

If we don't know, we can't spread the word, so do share your info. Help us to help you!

If you're looking for some festival love and laurels, including from us, here are some deadlines that'll slide on by before our April newsletter hits your inbox.

Panama Series Festival, Early deadline 15 March
Web Series Festival Global, Spring deadline 15 March
New Jersey Web Fest, Regular deadline 16 March
Chile Digital Fest, Final deadline 18 March
Bilbao Seriesland, Regular deadline 31 March
Minnesota Web Fest, Regular deadline date 31 March
NZ Web Fest, Regular deadline 31 March

If you've submitted a series to us, don't forget that you can submit to our trailer category for free. One you've submitted a series to us (factual or fiction, live or animated, but not a pilot) drop us an email to [email protected] and we'll send you a fee waiver code for your trailer. 

Easy as!

If you enjoy our monthly newsletters, but want info more than once every few weeks, give our social channels a go (links are just below). 

We post a few times a week, mostly on facebook and instagram. Our twitter is a bit more podcast-focused than our other channels, and LinkedIn we only use occasionally. 

We also have a linktree, which you can find here or access via our instagram bio.