Filmmakers and Media Professionals

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Facets’ Chicago International Children’s Film Festival is the largest annual festival of films for children in the world, programming 250 films and videos from 40 countries. With 23,000 children, adults and educators and over 100 filmmakers, programmers and celebrities each year, the Festival showcases the best in culturally diverse, value affirming new cinema for children ages 2-16 and is one of the only Academy Award qualifying children’s film festivals.

Over 100 filmmakers, programmers & celebrities attend the Festival and do Q&A’s following their screening or lead interactive workshops, an important part of the Festival’s mission to make media a participatory rather than a passive experience. Past attendees include: Shia LaBeouf (Transformers, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), animators from LAIKA Studios (makers of Coraline), Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park, The Young Victoria), LeVar Burton (Reading Rainbow, Star Trek: The Next Generation), Jane Seymour (Wedding Crashers), Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters), Sissy Spacek (Coal Miner’s Daughter); Terry Jones (Monty Python’s Flying Circus); and film critic Roger Ebert.

The Festival operates a small but dynamic market for foreign and U.S. distributors, buyers and festival programmers welcoming representatives from the Tribeca Film Festival, Starz!/Encore, Nickelodeon, Sesame Workshop, AMPAS,  Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the National Gallery of Art, and many other national and international organizations who attended the Festival to scout films for possible distribution or presentation rights. The CICFF’s “ProPass” professional accreditation is the source of programming for scores of other children’s film events worldwide.