{"id":81780,"date":"2026-05-13T17:37:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/81780\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T17:37:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:37:15","slug":"film-festival-submission-platform-miralot-launches-in-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/81780\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Festival Submission Platform Miralot Launches in Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAhead of this year\u2019s March\u00e9 du Film<\/a> in Cannes, former festival distributor Moritz Schneider is launching Miralot<\/a>, a data-driven film festival matching and submission platform aimed at helping filmmakers navigate the increasingly fragmented global festival landscape more strategically. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Berlin-based platform, founded by Schneider and Justus Timm, is backed by Roger Crotti, former Disney chief for Germany, Austria and Swizterland; Dennis Ruh, former director of the Berlin Festival\u2019s European Film Market; and Joe Pawlas, former chief marketing officer at Netflix for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n

\n\tCrotti, who previously served as president of the Zurich Film Festival and was last year appointed to Constantin Film\u2019s supervisory board, Ruh, who now heads the Seriesly Berlin series festival, and Pawlas are shareholders and key advisors in the venture, which has also secured other financial and tech investors.<\/p>\n

\n\tLikewise boasting serious bona fides is Miralot\u2019s management: Schneider, the company\u2019s CEO, has more than 15 years of experience in international festival distribution. He co-founded Swiss boutique agency Cut-Up, whose clients went on to receive Oscar nominations, BAFTA wins and awards at major festivals, including the Berlinale<\/a>. He also headed Festival and Sales at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), one of Switzerland\u2019s leading film schools. Timm, meanwhile, serves as Miralot\u2019s co-CEO, overseeing operations and finance. He previously built and scaled a B2B platform business with more than 50,000 customers, including a successful strategic exit.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Schneider, the time is right for a service that can help filmmakers find the most suitable festivals for their films. Festival submissions have become increasingly expensive and difficult to navigate for filmmakers, he says. With more than 15,000 festivals worldwide and submission fees continuing to rise, filmmakers often spend thousands of dollars navigating a fragmented festival landscape and submitting to competitions that are ultimately the wrong fit for their work.<\/p>\n

\n\tMiralot, he adds, was built to change that by combining festival discovery, matching and submission for filmmakers worldwide. The company currently includes more than 5,500 curated festival competitions across 80 countries, ranging from major international festivals to regional and genre festivals. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere are more ways to reach a global audience than ever, and almost no map for any of them,\u201d Timm stresses. \u201cThat is the gap we are closing, for every rights holder, whether they are bringing a single debut or a catalogue of two hundred titles. Rights holders spend years and millions creating a film. We owe them infrastructure that takes the release and everything after it as seriously as the years before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat potential is what convinced Crotti to join the business: \u201cMiralot is rethinking film distribution with a powerful combination of industry expertise and AI- and data-driven technology,\u201d he says. \u201cI invested because I see the potential for a true paradigm shift in how films connect with festivals, buyers and audiences worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Ruh, Miralot aims to achieve goals he himself has championed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFestival strategies and the patterns behind festival programming have been a central part of my professional work from the very beginning,\u201d says Ruh. \u201cOver many years, I have actively worked on developing festival strategies and advising filmmakers, sales companies and institutions on how crucial precise positioning and informed strategic thinking are within the festival ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat convinced me to become involved with Miralot is the combination of deep festival expertise with a highly analytical, data-driven approach to developing tailored strategies while also helping festivals receive submissions that genuinely fit their programming profiles. I believe this has the potential to make the relationship between filmmakers, rights holders and festivals significantly more effective and meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile festivals are currently the platform\u2019s primary focus, Miralot sees the broader opportunity in helping filmmakers better understand how films move through the international landscape and ultimately find audiences worldwide.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn using the platform, filmmakers upload their projects and receive tailored festival recommendations based on such factors as genre, runtime, language, premiere status and previous festival selections, allowing them to discover suitable matches and submit directly to festivals through Miralot with one click<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe matching and submission platform helps filmmakers reduce unnecessary submission costs, improve festival discovery and avoid redundant submissions through curated recommendations rather than unfiltered listings.<\/p>\n

\n\tSchneider notes that most filmmakers \u201cdon\u2019t struggle because their films are bad. They struggle because the festival landscape is fragmented, expensive and extremely difficult to navigate without industry experience. We wanted to give filmmakers access to the kind of strategic insight that previously only established festival distributors had.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe platform already boasts a rapidly growing number of gratified users.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cInstead of pushing filmmakers through layers of complicated discovery platforms, Miralot has simplified the process of identifying where a film truly fits, while keeping the economics transparent,\u201c says Indian director-producer Deepti Chawla of Mumbai-based Inflixious Content & Art. <\/p>\n

\n\tBangladeshi helmer Mashroor Parvez echoes the sentiment: \u201cWhat I like about Miralot is that it treats festival strategy less like gambling and more like authorship. It brings structure and intelligence to a process that usually runs on guesswork.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn providing the ideal service, Miralot has collected years of historical festival selection data alongside live submission and acceptance data across the platform. The company sees this growing dataset as a foundation for further developing its matching system and helping filmmakers navigate the international festival landscape even more strategically.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe platform is already used by filmmakers from more than 50 countries across Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania, spanning projects from short films and documentaries to arthouse and genre features. For festivals, Miralot offers increased visibility among filmmakers actively searching for festivals that are the right fit for their work, including competitions they may otherwise never have discovered.<\/p>\n

\n\tMiralot is also helping film students to better grasp the complexities of the international festival circuit, says Steve Reverand, co-director of the Prague Film School in the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt the Prague Film School, we\u2019ve introduced Miralot to guide our students through the often overwhelming landscape of film festivals. Such a curated, intuitive platform helps them identify the best opportunities for their student films to get noticed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of this year\u2019s March\u00e9 du Film in Cannes, former festival distributor Moritz Schneider is launching Miralot, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,761,7125,3148,190,43545,43442],"class_list":{"0":"post-81780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-berlinale","10":"tag-cannes-film-festival","11":"tag-efm","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-marchu00e9-du-film","14":"tag-miralot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116568486588976296","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}