FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Hiike is a platform that connects filmmakers with film festivals. Filmmakers can discover festivals and submit their work, while festivals can manage calls for entries, review submissions, and build their communities.

Create an account, then choose whether you're joining as a filmmaker looking to submit work or as a festival looking to manage submissions.

Creating an account is free. Some actions, such as submitting to a festival, may involve a submission fee set by the festival.

On the site, there are two main profiles: Filmmaker and Festival Organizer.

Filmmakers can upload their projects, take a quiz to find matches, and submit to festivals. Festival organizers manage festivals, accept submissions, and handle the usual processes on the site. You can add a new profile by clicking on Profile icon and then “Add Profile” button.

You can switch profiles by clicking the Profile icon, hovering over Switch Profile, and selecting the profile you want.

You can deactivate it by opening the Profile icon, going to Profile Settings, and selecting Deactivate Profile.

The Quiz is a paid feature that helps filmmakers find the festivals that are the best fit for their project. You provide details about your project, and after payment you receive your quiz results: a curated list of matching festivals along with their specifications.

Our database currently includes over 400 festivals in the USA to match against, and we’re continually working to grow that number.

As a guideline, we highly recommend filling in all fields and providing truthful information about the project before submitting.

Genre, sub-genre, filming location, and duration should be confirmed with the festivals you plan to submit to.

If your video upload gets stuck or stops unexpectedly, please check your internet connection and (if applicable) your VPN. If the issue persists, please contact support.

We also recommend using link upload instead of file upload—it’s faster and provides a better experience.

When you submit a project to a festival, its organizers can see your name, bio, pronouns, gender, affinity, date of birth, phone number, address, and account email alongside your submission.

You can update these details anytime in Profile Settings. Changes also appear on submissions you’ve already sent.

Select Sign Up in the upper right-hand corner, create your account, and choose the Festival Organizer profile. You land in Manage Festival, where the sidebar walks you through everything a festival needs: festival details, Submission Preferences for your categories and deadlines, Review Preferences, and Financials for payouts.

Most organizers need 30–40 minutes to create a festival profile and fill in all the information. After you submit it for review, our team checks it before it goes live, usually within a day (see 3.5).

To publish a festival:

1. Complete all required fields in your festival.
2. Open the Manage Festival page.
3. Click Submit for Review.
4. If anything is missing, you’ll see a list of the fields you still need to complete.
5. After you submit, we’ll review your festival and publish it if everything looks good.

If there’s an issue, we’ll contact you by email with next steps.

Yes. To keep scam festivals off the platform, we vet every festival before it can publish. If something needs changing, we’ll email you with next steps rather than leaving your profile in limbo.

Usually less than a day, and never more than 1–2 days. We’re notified the moment you submit, so reviews tend to happen quickly.

During the review we check that your festival is genuine and eligible to accept submissions, which keeps scam festivals off Hiike. If anything needs changing, we’ll email you with next steps.

You’re receiving these reminders because one or more festival organizer profiles are still in draft. To stop them, complete all required fields and submit the profile for review. If you don’t need the profile, you can archive it by opening the Profile icon, going to Profile Settings, and selecting Deactivate Profile.

Yes. Open Staff & Roles in the Festival Manager sidebar and invite your team by email — several people at once if you like. Each invite gets a role: Admin, Coordinator, Programmer, Screener, Judge, Finance Manager, Viewer, or Custom.

Yes. Invite them from Staff & Roles with the Screener, Judge, or Programmer role. They sign in with their own Hiike account and see only the festival work assigned to them.

Yes. Every role is a set of permissions you can adjust per person in Staff & Roles, covering festival content, staff, submissions, reviewing, submission forms, financials, connections, and sponsorships.

To narrow things further, use Review Preferences → Reviewer × Category Assignment to decide which categories each reviewer is responsible for.

Yes. In Review Preferences → Evaluation Criteria, add your own criteria and give each one a weight. Hiike is the only platform that supports weighted reviewing criteria, so the things that matter most to your festival count for more in the final score.

Yes. Reviewers score every submission against your criteria, and you can switch on Enable Comments in Review Preferences → Reviewer Options so they can leave written notes as well.

Yes. Festival Submissions lets you filter by category, genre, type, status, duration, filming location, submitter location, and submission date — and you can group the whole table by category in one click.

Yes. Select the submissions you want in Festival Submissions and choose Export CSV. You pick which fields to include, from project details and filmmaker contact information through to reviewing scores.

Hiike offers the lowest fees of any festival platform. Our standard fee is 5% if your festival uses Hiike exclusively, and 10% if your festival uses Hiike along with other platforms.

The fee is deducted automatically from each submission payment, so there’s nothing to invoice or pay separately.

No. There are no setup fees to use Hiike, no annual fees, and no charge to create or publish your festival. You only pay the percentage on submission fees you actually collect.

Festivals are paid out monthly through Stripe. Connect your account under Financials → Payout Account; once Stripe has enabled charges and payouts, submission revenue reaches your bank account on that schedule.

The same page shows your total revenue, net revenue, and commission at any time, and Manage Account takes you back into Stripe whenever you need to update your bank or account details.

Yes, Hiike is able to charge submission fees in USD, CAD, GBP, and EUR. Which one applies follows the country you select when connecting your payout account in Financials.

You can connect a payout account based in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, or Italy. Pick the country where your festival or the account holder is legally based when you add your bank account in Financials.

Don’t see your country? Email support@hiike.com and we’ll get back to you quickly.

All refunds and chargebacks are managed through Stripe. Issue a refund or respond to a dispute from the Stripe dashboard of the account you connected to your festival; the adjustment then shows up in your Hiike Financials figures and in your next payout.

Discount and waiver codes are created in Financials → Waiver Codes using Create New Code. You choose the code itself, whether it takes a percentage off or a fixed amount, how many times it can be used, when it expires, and which categories it applies to.

Yes, you can create multiple deadlines with variable submission fees. Add as many as you need in Submission Preferences → Dates & Deadlines, name them Early Bird, Regular, Late or anything else that suits your festival, and set a separate fee for each one.

Yes. In Submission Preferences → Category Settings & Costs, every category carries its own fee, and that fee can differ per deadline — so a short film at the early-bird deadline and a feature at the late deadline can be priced completely independently.

Yes, you can customize your waivers and offer special discounts to individuals, groups, organizations, or really anything you can think of.

Create the code in Financials → Waiver Codes and share it directly with whoever it’s for. Limits on uses, expiry date, and eligible categories keep it being used exactly the way you intend.

Yes, and plenty of festivals run both while they transition. Hiike offers a 5% rate for festivals that use Hiike exclusively, which is far cheaper than FilmFreeway’s 12% rate — so exclusivity is worth considering once you’ve settled in.

Create a festival profile and start populating it. Moving an existing festival takes about 20 minutes on average, because the information already exists on your current listing and only needs copying across.

There is no direct way to import your festival’s information from another platform. However, copy and paste works just as well — the fields on Hiike map closely to what you already have.

Yes. Open Festival Submissions → External submissions and upload a CSV of your past entries. The file needs a stable submission ID column so each row can be matched, and once imported those entries can be viewed and reviewed alongside your Hiike submissions.

They will still be on FilmFreeway and can be managed from there. If you’d rather work from one place, export them and bring them into Hiike as external submissions.

No, Hiike and FilmFreeway can both be used together for as long as you need. The only difference is the rate: 10% while you use other platforms too, 5% once you’re exclusive to Hiike.

Emails, newsletters, social media, and directly speaking with your filmmakers is the most effective way to tell them you’ve changed platforms.

It helps to lead with the reason: Hiike vets every festival before it publishes, so filmmakers know they aren’t submitting into a scam.

Yes. Open Branding Assets to copy your festival’s official link for your website, socials, and promo material, or to grab a ready-made embed snippet for a branded submission button in the size that fits your page.