After a successful 2019, the Lake County Film Festival has expanded to a eleven-day program from its traditional long weekend, creating more opportunities for filmmakers across the world and within the Chicagoland area to showcase their work.
Hosted by the College Of Lake County, the LCFF screens to an audience of more than 700,000 county residents in a community underserved in the area of independent cinema. Patrons of the film festival are engaged, eager, and excited to watch films from independent filmmakers across all different genres and walks of life.
In 2019, the LCFF touted a program with nearly 50% women feature filmmakers and hope to grow that number in 2020. The festival prides itself on providing a platform for a diverse group of filmmakers. From sex to race to genre: the LCFF has stories for everybody. And with an expanded program slated for 2020, the festival hopes to screen over a dozen narrative features, a dozen documentary features, and approximately 100 short films.
We are proud of our history showing the early work of filmmakers like Mike Flannagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep), Chad Hartigan (Morris From America, This Is Martin Bonner), Alex Karpovsky (Girls), and Leah Meyerhoff (I Believe In Unicorns), but we're also incredibly proud of all the great films we've shown by people that haven't achieved the same level of recognition.
If nothing else, the Lake County Film Festival is a filmmakers’ film festival. From the number of filmmakers who have attended in years past, the consensus is those who attend the screenings are passionate movie lovers, creating opportunities for filmmakers and audiences to engage with one another on their shared passion.
If you love independent movies as much as we do: we want to screen your film. So submit to us! We are ready to showcase your work to our vibrant audiences.
We usually give our jurors a lot of leeway with awards, but we will definitely be giving out awards for the following:
Audience Awards:
Best Narrative Feature
Best Documentary Feature
Best Narrative Short Film
Best Documentary Short FIlm
Jury Awards:
Best Narrative Feature
Best Documentary Feature
Best Narrative Short
Best Documentary Short