Third Horizon Film Festival

Helping Professionals To Use Story to Transform Communities

Third Horizon Film Festival

Sun bursts from sea.

Water not dousing his fire but

hiding the shadows that follow;

Water that welcomes his light.

She stands, both edge and the deep,

his birth her third horizon. -N.S.

 

Every film has two driving forces: the main character’s outer goal, and her inner need.

Filmmakers go to film festivals for two reasons. First, we have to network and build relationships to get our stories into the right hands. Great product means nothing if no one knows about it. So you go with the intention to “show and tell” – show your face as a player in the market and tell anyone who will hear about your upcoming projects. But we also have a second driving need:

Does our work matter?

It takes months and sometimes years of grueling work. Crafting a story that deserves a wide audience means that you work in the dark a lot – both literally and figuratively. Film festivals are the light for us because there we can sit with our audiences, talk with them, hear what they need, and know that our hearts drove us in the right direction.

Third Horizon was that for me. Seeing deeply reflective and sensitively told stories that looked like my own – my uncles, my cousins, our crazy neighbor — stories laughed over at New Year’s Eve basement parties and whispered at nine-nights. Stories that were obviously laboured over. The light in all our eyes when we recognized each other.