Winning a prize at a major film festival involves two entirely separate decisions made by two entirely separate groups of people: the programmers who decide what screens, and the jurors who decide what wins. Festival juries are typically assembled by the festival's own programmers or leadership, who recruit industry professionals whose expertise they trust, then hand them a set of rules—sometimes codified in detail, sometimes informal—that governs how the prize is decided. The FIPRESCI prize, awarded by the International Federation of Film Critics, offers an unusually explicit example of what those rules look like when they are written down in full.
Who Serves on a Film Festival Jury?
Festivals seek jurors whose professional credentials lend their prizes credibility. The Chicago International Film Festival describes its jurors simply as "the industry professionals who select the winners" of its competition awards; its International Competition Jury at the 62nd edition included Carolina Cavalli, an Italian writer-director whose debut feature premiered at Venice and whose work as a co-writer earned a SFFILM Rainin Grant and a Film Independent Spirit Award. The implicit logic is straightforward: a director who has been through the festival circuit understands what the films are up against.
Other festivals widen the professional net. When Alison Foreman interviewed the team behind the Fantasia festival's jury for IndieWire, the programmer explained the balancing act: "I like people who are immersed, who love film as much as I do… But I also like to make sure that they're well-rounded. So, they don't just know horror, but they're aficionados who watch other things and cover other things as well." That year Fantasia's jury president was filmmaker Elza Kephart, and the programmer noted she chose people the same way she chose films, balancing the political realities of her country with the festival's inclusive values. Jury selection, in other words, mirrors curation itself.
Formal Rules: The FIPRESCI Prize Example
FIPRESCI, which brings together film critics from around the world to award prizes at festivals, writes its rules out explicitly. Its prize regulations—approved by the organization's General Assembly in 2006—impose strict conflict-of-interest requirements: jury members cannot have any kind of connection with the competing films, nor with their production, distribution or advertising companies, nor with the festival itself, "neither artistically, nor financially." If a conflict emerges, a juror must immediately declare it to the jury president, who decides whether that person may continue serving.
The voting rules are equally precise. Decisions require an absolute majority of all jury members present, and delegation of votes is unacceptable—no juror may hand their vote to someone else. Deliberations may even be open to the public, a transparency measure unusual in a process often shrouded in confidentiality. The obligations extend beyond the verdict: the jury president must send a protocol covering the jury's activities, including prizes and technical data, to FIPRESCI's Board, and every jury member must write a text on the festival for publication on the Federation's website, with the winning film receiving a review. The organization's official languages, for its juries as much as its administration, are English and French.
Decision-Making and Impartiality
What these regulations address is the core vulnerability of any festival award: taste is subjective, but the process need not be. The FIPRESCI conflict rules acknowledge that critics and filmmakers are embedded in professional networks—collaborators, employers, distributors—that could quietly bend a verdict, and they convert that risk into a disclosure duty with a named decision-maker. The absolute-majority requirement prevents a prize from being carried by a single dominant voice, while the ban on delegated votes ensures the people who watched and discussed the films are the people who cast the ballots.
The transparency provisions cut both ways. Opening deliberations to the public, where a festival permits it, exposes the reasoning behind the prize rather than just the result. So does the required written record—each juror's published text on the festival makes individual judgment visible and accountable. None of this removes subjectivity from the evaluation; it simply disciplines the context in which subjective judgment operates. The same principle appears informally elsewhere: the Fantasia programmer's insistence on well-rounded jurors is an uncodified version of the same concern, ensuring evaluators bring broad context rather than narrow allegiance.
Comparing Jury Selection and Procedures
The clearest way to see how festivals differ in formality is to place a fully codified international prize beside the general practices of festival juries side by side:
| Aspect | FIPRESCI Prize Jury | General Festival Juries (e.g., Fantasia, Chicago) |
|---|---|---|
| Who serves | Film critics, as an International Federation of Film Critics prize | Industry professionals, with festivals like Fantasia explicitly seeking a mix of backgrounds |
| Composition logic | Codified in regulations approved by the General Assembly in 2006 | Chosen by programmers balancing values and professional context |
| Conflict of interest | Explicit ban on artistic or financial connections to films, their companies, or the festival; declaration to the jury president required | Not detailed as formal rules in festival descriptions; impartiality is an implicit expectation of the selection process |
| Voting | Absolute majority of all members present; no delegation of votes | Not specified in the general passages describing jury composition |
| Accountability | Protocol to the Board; each juror writes a published text; deliberations may be public | Public juror biographies; award outcomes announced at the festival |
The comparison shows a spectrum rather than a binary. Every jury described here is built on professional expertise, but FIPRESCI converts expertise into a documented procedure—disclosure, majority, publication—while Fantasia and Chicago embed their safeguards in who gets chosen rather than in rules about how the choice is made.
Navigating Festival Awards: What to Look For
One structural point resolves much of the confusion around festival honors: the people who select a film for a festival are not the people who award it. SFFILM, for instance, credits a programming team and screening committee with sifting through thousands of submissions for its festival, while its listed jurors serve a different function entirely—deciding among the films already chosen. Chicago's juries likewise select "the winners" of the festival's awards, a role distinct from the programmers behind the Official Selection. Getting in and getting honored are separate hurdles, judged by separate hands.
When evaluating the credibility and process of a film festival award, consider the explicit rules governing its jury's composition, conflict of interest policies, and voting procedures, as these indicate the level of formal rigor and impartiality. A prize with published regulations—stated majority thresholds, disclosure duties, a documented record—invites scrutiny of its method; one described only through juror biographies invites scrutiny of its people. The measurable indicator is the presence of publicly available, detailed jury regulations, as FIPRESCI publishes, versus more general descriptions of juror profiles and selection goals. Before treating any festival laurel as weighty, look for which kind of document stands behind it.
Sources
- FIPRESCI Prize - FIPRESCI — FIPRESCI | The International Federation of Film Critics
- Festival Juries - Cinema/Chicago
- How to Get Picked for Jury Duty at a Film Festival (or,… — IndieWire
- 2026 Festival Guests, Jurors, and Screening Committee - SFFILM
