Film Festivals — Now the Target of Hackers

In recent weeks, the film festival community has been rocked by a malicious hacking incident targeting the widely used submission platform FilmFreeway. The repercussions have been deeply felt across several famed film festivals world-wide, leaving filmmakers and festival organizers reeling from the fallout.

The California and Singapore hackers, yet to be identified, seized control of the FilmFreeway platform to perpetrate a sophisticated scam. They gained unauthorized access to filmmakers’ contact information and the names of their films to impersonate legitimate festival organizers. One of the affected festivals, which I am closely associated with, found itself at the heart of this distressing scheme.

As a filmmaker and someone who takes pride in supporting the filmmaker community, this incident has upset me greatly. My name and credibility are tied closely to one of the impacted festivals, I’ve seen firsthand the dedication and passion that goes into organizing these events. Festivals are not merely platforms of which to screen content; they are communities built on trust, creativity, and mutual respect between filmmakers and organizers.

The method of the attack was as cunning as it was devious. The hackers meticulously copied the websites of several prestigious film festivals, making their fraudulent emails appear…