Screenwriting : FilmFreeway and festival offers by Andrew Carroll

So as a relatively new screenwriter, one thing I did recently was pay to advertise my Feature Screenplay, which was $50, to distribute a blurb in an email which goes to the festivals on FilmFreeway.

I never knew how many responses I was going to get. I think I'm up to 100 or more. It's actually a hell of a value. They offer discounts to enter the festivals (included Big Apple, Pasadena, etc). But then there are SO many that really are not applicable and seem to be money grabs. Several Tamil language ones (it's not a Tamil script), many smaller "boutique" ones, and then some that were just not applicable. Though I support LGBTQI+ and ally, I'm not in that category, nor am I a woman, and some of the festivals were specifically to promote those underrepresented groups. I'm also concerned that some of the foreign language festivals asking me to enter may simply be using it to get a copy of the screenplay and possibly (not accusing, just presuming) produce it in their country in their language, end rounding around copyright laws and WGA restrictions.

So the only way I found helps to sort through all of them was to use Perplexity to review all the festivals and rate them, which it did a very good job of. It helped me sort through the festivals to figure out which ones would have the most value as well as applicable to my feature screenplay currently being promoted.

Does anyone have any other sources worth looking at? With the demise of Coverfly, and now we're all settling into FilmFreeway as well as Stage32's growing influence, it's difficult to know, other than making sure to participate in local festivals (for me, Sedona, etc) where best to spend the limited dollars that many starting screenwriters have.