Heathcote Film Festival

The Heathcote Film Festival is a short film festival that has been running since 2010, showcasing both Australian and international short films.

We are a not-for-profit Short Film Festival run by volunteers and have full support from our local community. Each year, we attract more and more visitors from neighbouring towns and the nearby city of Melbourne. We receive sponsorship from a number of wineries as well as the community bank and other sponsors/grants.

Our Festival aims to grow and proliferate film culture in our community and surrounding rural region. The festival was started by a small group of passionate people who wanted to create a much-loved annual event.

We aim to celebrate film of all genres and encourage the discussion of film and film-making and to provide a forum for emerging film-makers. We hope our Festival satisfies the needs of film devotees as well as introducing novices to as broad a range of film as possible in an environment rich with film knowledge and love of film. At our Festival we also endeavour to marry enjoyment of film with the enjoyment of wine and food from our region.

The festival is held in mid September in Heathcote (Central Victoria) about a 90-minute drive north of Melbourne.

Submitted films must be no longer than 15 minutes and can be of any genre. Awards are presented at the main festival in September.

This year we are pleased to introduce an emerging film-maker award, specifically for early-career film-makers who have never produced a film for public showing before and who live or have lived in Victoria, Australia.

Filmmakers are invited to submit films in the following categories:
Short films – Submission fee: AUD$10 /AUD$8 for Gold members
Emerging Film Makers (short films) – must be an emerging film maker who lives or who has lived in Victoria, Australia – Submission fee: AUD$5/AUD$4 for Gold members