Founding 100 · Opening Night 1 November

We're looking for
100 filmmakers.
Not 100,000 posters.

FlickFuel is a film festival that never closes. Original AI-made films, three minutes and up, with an actual story. Free to enter. A real production grant, every single month. And on the first of the month the board resets to zero, so nobody carries last month's momentum into your category.

100 places. Permanent Founding Laurel. Six months of Maker Studio, free.

Founding places
100 remaining
Opening Night1 Nov 2026
The problem

You made something good.
Then it drowned.

You spent three weeks on a seven-minute film. You posted it. It sat between a dance trend and a cat, got eleven seconds of a stranger's attention, and vanished. There is nowhere built for what you actually make — and no way to fund the next one.

3:00

Minimum runtime

Anything shorter is a trailer. We want the film. This is the rule everything else is built around, and we are not moving it.

$0

To enter. Forever.

Every Maker enters on identical footing. A subscription buys storage and resolution — never entry, never eligibility, never a jury's attention.

1st

The board resets

Every month, to zero, for everybody. Last month's winner starts level with your first upload. That is the whole point.

Let's be specific about this

We are not a feed.

Every decision below is deliberate, and several of them cost us growth. We made them anyway, because a festival and a feed are not the same thing and we would rather be the first one.

The feed
FlickFuel
30-second clips
Three minutes, minimum
Infinite scroll
A programme you get to the end of
An algorithm nobody can see
Published criteria and a named jury
Sound-on autoplay, vertical, forever
Landscape-first player. You chose the frame; we keep it.
Duets, stitches, remixes of your work
None. Your film is your film.
Go viral or disappear
Rank on merit, in your category, this month
Ad revenue, eventually, maybe
A production grant for the next film, this month
How it works

Four things happen.

You submit a filmThree minutes or more. One-off or a serial. Declare the AI tools you used — we show them on the card, because the audience here finds that interesting, not embarrassing. It clears moderation, then it's in the deck.
People watch and Fuel itViewers swipe a deck of marquee cards. Right to Fuel, left to pass, up for premiere-worthy. Only Fuel people earned by watching counts toward your rank — nobody can buy their way past you.
Your film ignitesCross the Fuel threshold and every viewer watching at that moment gets the same full-screen burst at the same instant, your name rolls as a title card, and you get a notification that says your next film just got funded. It is a shared event, and it only happens because people chose it.
The month closesThe audience produces a shortlist in each category. A jury picks the winners on published criteria — storytelling, craft, originality, what you did with the medium. Laurels are permanent. The grant is real money. Then the board resets.
The Founding 100

Get in before Opening Night.

The first hundred Makers shape what this becomes. There is a real advantage to being early, and we would rather give it to you than spend it on ads.

  • A permanent Founding Laurel on your profile. Minted once, never issued again.
  • Six months of Maker Studio, free — unlimited entries, 60-minute runtimes, 4K, serials, custom posters, early Festival access.
  • Your film in the opening deck on 1 November, in front of the first audience.
  • A direct line to us. A hundred people is small enough that you get a human, not a ticket.
  • A say in the categories and the rules before they harden.

Send a link to something you've made. That's the whole application.

Straight answers

The questions you're about to ask

Does it cost anything to enter?

No. It never will. Entry is free for every Maker, and it is written into our Maker Agreement as a binding term, not a launch promotion. Subscriptions buy production capacity — storage, longer runtimes, 4K, serials. They buy nothing at all in the competition.

Can someone with money out-buy me?

No, and the design makes it impossible rather than discouraged. Only Fuel that viewers earned by watching counts toward a film's rank. Purchased Fuel buys visibility and tips and touches no award outcome. A jury then decides the winners from the audience shortlist, on criteria published before the month opens.

Who owns my film?

You do, entirely. You grant us permission to stream it and to use short extracts to promote FlickFuel, with your name on it. No exclusivity of any kind — enter it elsewhere, sell it, screen it, post it. Remove it whenever you like.

Is the grant real money?

Yes. It is paid by us out of our revenue, to fund your next film, and it is a prize for merit in a competition of skill. We publish the pool size and the split before each Festival opens. We would rather announce a small pot and pay it than a large one and not.

What counts as "AI-made"?

You conceived it, directed it, and cut it. The tools are the medium, not the authorship. Declare what you used — Veo, Sora, Kling, Runway, Suno, whatever — and we show it on the film card. What we reject is someone else's film, someone else's prompt passed off as yours, or music you haven't cleared.

Why three minutes?

Because a story needs room, and because every other platform has already optimised for the opposite. If we let thirty-second clips in, we become a feed with extra steps within a month. It is the one rule we will not trade for growth.

Who can join?

Makers aged 18 and over. FlickFuel is live in Australia, the UK, the US, Canada and Ireland at launch, with more following. 18+ across the board, no exceptions.

The next Festival opens
on the first of the month.

Whether or not your film is in it is the only question here.