Hi 

Welcome to April. The year is a quarter done and, happily for us, we're still on track!

We're very happy to have passed the first of #NZWF23's deadlines, and even happier with the calibre of the submissions we've received.

Scroll on down to find our newest early selections for this year's edition, and plenty else besides. 

Enjoy!

 
Team #NZWF23

Roll the drums, it's time to announce more early selections for 2023!

These are chosen from all submissions received before our earlybird deadline on 31 March.

As always, if a show was submitted to us but is not named below, it's very definitely still in the mix for selection. We try not to disappoint anybody until our full line-up is released in September!

For now, we're excited to add these titles to our 2023 programme ...

Four podcasts ... Actual Play podcasts Ain't Slayed Nobody and All Night Society; and fiction podcasts The Secret of St Kilda and The Rapscallion Agency.

Three local short films ... Alice Lolohea's doco Testimony, made as part of the 2022 Loading Docs programme; Zakea Page's Ink & Gold; and Kathleen Winter & Ingrid Saker's MV for Ingrid and the Ministers' Boofhead.

Two web series pilots ... Joan Click and Andy Day's pilot Well Well Wellness, and Alpha/Beta from Misha Calvert, who won our Best Pilot award back in 2018 with Strut.

Two more series ... Maggie Shui's factual show, Dating While Asian, and Lori Malépart-Traversy's animated Canadian series Magical Caresses.

Six international narrative fiction series which are from creators getting their first selection from NZ Web Fest. Gay Mean Girls from Heyishi Zhang; Shipwrecked Comedy's Headless; Filmcoop's Less Than Kosher (above); Lost in Moldova from John Lewis; Revenge of the Black Best Friend by Amanda Parris; and Maurice Huvelin's Tutopique.

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

We're all about the shout-outs, so we're very happy to see plenty of creators whose work we had the pleasure and privilege of sharing now scoring selections, nominations and wins elsewhere.

Among our fellow festivals in the Web Series World Cup there are plenty of winners already this year, as Panama, Cusco and Carballo Interplay have all competed their editions. Across those events, shows including Roadie, Sloppy Jones and Word of Sox (above) came away winners. 

Arthur, Lower East Asides and Sui Generis were among the winners at the WSWC Creators' Choice Awards.

Kith & Kin and NZ short film Ink and Gold (an early selection for this year's NZWF) were among the International Online Web Fest winners.

The Indie Series Awards has named Detention Adventure and Kith & Kin among its nominees for next week's ceremony, and the official selections for Die Seriale, LA Web Fest and Stareable include over two dozen titles from #NZWF22. 

Congrats, too, to three of our previous nominees and winners from Australia, who've picked up development support for new projects ... 

Luke Eve, who's won awards from us for series High Life and Cancelled, picks up support as director and producer of feature adventure comedy Flip.

Vonne Patiag, whose Halal Gurls was a finalist at #NZWF20, gets support for drama Tomgirl.

Christiaan Van Vuuren, whose Over and Out was a 2019 finalist, gets support for dramedy Mortal Coil.

Congrats and good luck to all of them!

Wrap your eyes and ears around some NZ shows ...

Season five of Ahikāroa, a winner at our last two editions.

Spinoff factual series Back on the Board

Podcast and web series Conversations with my Immigrant Parents from Julie Zhu, who was a joint winner of Best Director Factual award last year for Takeout Kids. 

From elsewhere, the first seasons of shows whose second seasons we've named as early selections ...

Canadian period drama Chateau Laurier

Music mockumentary Forgotten Masters

Canadian diversity/representation dramedy Tokens

From Luxembourg, thriller W.

For those in Auckland, a heads up that May's Auckland Writers Festival has a panel session with musicians including Justin Harwood, who's also the creator of much-awarded web series High Road, the first season of which won the inaugural Web Series World Cup and our own inaugural Best Web Series award.

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

If you're releasing something, be it brand new or (for series and podcasts) a new season, shamelessly self-promote by dropping us a line or adding [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.

Web Series Festival Global, April 15 Late Deadline
Panama Series Festival, April 20 Regular Deadline
Apulia Web Fest, April 30 Late Deadline
Baltimore, April 30 Regular Deadline
Rio Web Fest, April 30 Earlybird Deadline
TO Web Fest, April 30 Regular Deadline

For more deadlines, check out the events page on our site, which includes deadlines and event dates for Web Series World Cup and Audio Fiction World Cup festivals, plus listings for other (mostly NZ) festival deadlines and event dates.

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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.