Hi 

The big news this month, for us at least, is that our line-up for 2023 is 99% done. Our podcast selections are now announced (see below). We'll announce our series and shorts selections by this time next week.

(If you're wondering what the missing 1% is, we have a few direct selections from other fests that haven't been announced yet.)

If you or your friends, frenemies or whanau are in the mix, feel free to sing, dance and shout about it. if you do that on any of facebook, insta or the platform fka Twitter, tag @nzwebfest and we'll do our best to like and respond.

Congratulations to everyone who's a part of every one of our selections. Next month we'll announce who's up for what awards, and between now and then - starting tomorrow - we'll give as many titles in the line-ups as possible a shout-out on our social channels.

There is other news in this newsletter, too, so just keep on scrolling.

Enjoy!

 
Team #NZWF23

Our podcast line-ups are now confirmed. 

Break out the happy dances and hang up the bunting for ...

Actual Play titles Ain't Slayed Nobody, Another Bad Side Quest, Dark Dice, Kill Every Monster, Nature of My Game, Party of One, Quest Friends, Response Team Omnicron, The All Night Society, The Dirty Twenty Podcast, The Unsung Tales, The Valkyrie Cycle, and Top of the Round.

Standalone Fiction titles Bound Unto Root, It's a Wonderful Law & Order Life SVU, Liars & Leeches, The Slightly Sleazy Speakeasy, The Something, The Sticker Game, and Whistlebottom.

Serialised Fiction titles Barjory Buffet: The Cruise Detective, Curious Matter, Detailed Ledger, Dice Tower Theatre, Don't Mind, Experiment 31E, Fawx & Stallion, Fire Pockets, Muckey Landing, October's Children, Once Upon a Wasteland, Re: Dracula, Savage Waking, Sidequesting, Small Victories, Starship Q Star, Subsister, Table Read: Ren Faire vs Aliens, Tales from Three Corners, The Apochrypha Chronicles, The Boar Knight, The Endless Elsewhere Podcast, The Rapscallion Agency, The Secret of St Kilda, The White Vault, Uncle Walter's Year of Wonder, Vampire: The Masquerade, VAST Horizon, We're Alive: Descendants, Where the Stars Fell, and Womb Envy.

Congrats to all the creators, casts and crews behind those podcasts, series and shorts. You can check out all selections across all our podcast, short film and web series categories right here. 

We haven't seen updated Web Series World Cup rankings in the last few weeks, so the current top three titles remain:

1. Chateau Laurier (above)
2. W.
3. Streams Flow From A River and Tokens

We've also not yet seen any further updates to the Audio Fiction World Cup rankings, so the top three also remains unchanged for now ... 

1. We're Alive: Descendants
2. The All Night Society
3. Savage Waking: Obliteration

The circuit is heating up this month with plenty of festivals running, including 

Lima runs 19 September
Toronto runs 19-20 September
New Jersey runs 21-24 September
Sydney runs 30 September
Minnesota runs 2-5 October

so we expect to see some ranking updates over the next few weeks.

With summer roasting and toasting much of the northern hemisphere, few festivals are running right now, but that doesn't mean they're taking a siesta. 

Apulia did its dash over the weekend, so congrats to everyone who came away winners - and congrats to Michele and his team for another great edition. 

Plenty of announcements of line-ups of selections and award nominees are coming out, so congrats to everyone picking up good news from festivals including Baltimore, Bilbao, Marseille, Minnesota, New Jersey and Sydney.

It's always a treat to see people and shows that we've been lucky enough to share continue with their successful journeys. We've seen it happen locally, most recently for Team Flat 3, whose Flat 3 and Friday Night Bites were a finalist and winner respectively at early editions of NZ Web Fest. Their TV series Creamerie is now in its second season with Hulu on board. 

We also see it with creators elsewhere and were very happy to see good things happening for Adjani Salmon and Dreaming Whilst Black (above).

We enjoyed the web series back in 2019, when Adjani won our Best Actor award, and have enjoyed seeing him get recognised by the BAFTAs, watching Dreaming grow into a TV series for the BBC, and get picked up by distributor and prodco A24 (the one behind the awards magnet Everything Everywhere All At Once). Last month, Adjani's Dreaming Whilst Black was bought by Showtime. 

We don't claim an ounce of credit for any of these successes, but we've enjoyed seeing the shows' creators get some well-deserved reward. 

We've got a couple of gems we'd recommend you enjoy this month. 

Season 3 of K' Road Chronicles (above) has just released. Season 2 was among our finalists last year, and the first season of the show won a Best Director award from us in 2019 - when, coincidentally, we held our ceremony in Auckland's Mercury Theatre, just off K' Road. 

Kāinga is now available to stream on RNZ. The anthology feature is made up of 8 shorts, two of which were directed by winners at #NZWF2222, Julie Zhu and Michelle Ang. 

Also releasing is this year's crop of Someday Stories titles - six short films by young filmmakers. The first film, I Stand for Consent, released yesterday. Enjoy it - and the others as they release - here. 

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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. 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 next newsletter hits your inbox.

Rio Web Fest, final deadline, 10 September
British Web Awards, late deadline, 23 September
LA Web Fest, earlybird deadline, 30 September
Digital Media Fest (Rome), regular deadline, 10 October

If you submitted work to Melbourne Web Fest, it's redated this year's event from October to 9 December. 

Events also open for submissions now, but with deadlines further away, include Italy's Digital Media Fest and Miami WebFest.

For more deadlines, check out the calendar 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.