Built by youth for the youth
CLYFF is not an institution. It is a small group of working filmmakers who kept watching youth work get dismissed as lesser and decided that was wrong.
Not a program. A movement.
The founders came from years of independent filmmaking across Colorado and the American West. Film school attendees and independent agents in the profession.
CLYFF is regionally rooted because that's where the founding team is from and where the work is being made.
Judging and Criteria
Selection and judging is handled by a panel of working filmmakers and film educators from the area. Directors, professors at Colorado Film School, etc.. The criteria are craft, specificity of vision, and whether the film earns the time it asks for.
Technical polish is not the bar. A film shot on a phone that has something to say will place ahead of a well-lit film that doesn't. The panel reads the work on its own terms.
Open to filmmakers under 30. Submissions accepted via FilmFreeway during the open window.