The Next Chapter

June 29, 2026

We have arrived to a new chapter for the International Mobile Film Festival and we are excited.

IMFF was launched as an international in-person film festival for all humans around the world in the Spring 2009 by founder Susy Botello, in San Diego, California.

Fifteen editions and almost 18 years have passed. We are now ready to bring our global community closer than ever before, by shifting to a community based film festival, officially.

Many who have attended our in-person film festival have praised the intimate setting and how we curate programing to ensure filmmakers come together in such a powerful setting, that when they walk away after the last day of the festival, they continue to stay together. Either in person or online.

Several filmmakers have returned to the festival, either as filmmakers or participants in some form or another, because of that community energy and vibe.

Festival founder Susy Botello is very open to embracing every filmmaker. She also insists on professionalism, and not creating conflicts of interest between filmmakers in the community.

Susy has always put the community first.

We always focused on creating a comfortable and intimate setting where people from different countries were able to connect in a very unique way, through their films and their stories, during the festival.

Now, it’s time to continue that energy and expand the reach to more filmmakers and humans around the world.

With that expansion in mind, we have been in discussion with our network and we’re building an alliance that is still growing.

The Alliance

We welcome you to take a look at our Global Mobile Film Alliance for IMFF 2027 and beyond.

We can hardly wait to achieve and share more with you, however, just as many projects in our industry, we will need to keep things under wraps until we are ready to share them with the world.

We want to thank Caroline, James, Adam and Rafael for joining our alliance. We are grateful for their contribution to align IMFF 2027 into our vision of a community based film festival to support human storytelling and filmmaking.

We are still holding discussions with other potential members.

What changes may come to IMFF for filmmakers?

Our criteria will remain the same. We don’t want any deviation that may be shocking for our filmmaking community.

There may be minor changes in the number of feature films we can present from two or three, but that mostly depends on the venue. There may be some changes to the number of short films we can present as well.

We still plan to only select films for the short film competition that will be presented at the film festival.

All selected films from our short film competition can expect to be showcased. We’ll do our very best to make that happen. We’ll do our best to showcase all selectees from The Rookie Award contest too.

All other criteria should remain the same. You can check our rules here. There may be minor changes between now and the date we open for submissions. There may also be some changes to categories. It’s just too soon to know for sure.

Normally, we open film submissions in the summer but this year, we are opening it later. We want everything to be in order before we open for submissions. The window for submissions will be shorter than usual this year.

We look forward to sharing more updates with you. Come back to our website to stay updated. Including our Social page!

If you’re a previous participating filmmaker from the community, you can email us. We may be able to share some details with you that we cannot commit to sharing publicly at this time. We appreciate your understanding.

Highlights

The Mobile Film School (unaccredited) has been putting on workshops by attending participants and members of the community since the inaugural edition of IMFF when it was announced.

During IMFF, we have sometimes had exhibitors attend in person to share their filmmaking gear with a hands-on approach.

Susy Botello has met with countless people and organizations over the years, to share the empowerment of storytelling through film using smartphones. Pictured with “Helping Kids Around the World” organization in 2014.

The festival celebrates attending filmmakers with a special red carpet show that includes cosplayers as sponsors. Pictured with IMFF 2023 filmmakers are Science Fiction Coalition and Dude Vader.

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