The Melbourne Doc Fest each year curates world class features direct from some of the hottest most prestigious documentary film festivals in the world like Sheffield Doc Fest, Traverse City Film Festival Doc NYC, SXSW, Doc Edge and IDFA. But what matters to us most is documentaries that are well-made, compelling, thought provoking, passionate and relevant to Australian audiences.

The Melbourne Doc Fest is one of the world newest documentary film festivals and one of the most fun and interesting stop overs on the international documentary film festival circuit.

Innovative: 
The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is the only festival in Australasia to provide feedback on submissions. The feedback is simple, straight forward, positive and constructive (like a review) and gives you an insight into what the curator thought of your documentary and will be provided to you by 22 July 2017 if you want it by applying to info@mdff.org.au

We also are looking to simulcast part of the festival in 2017 by taking it online via Beama VOD services and take Melbourne to the world.

Our categories like Documentary Photography have never been attempted by a documentary film festival in the southern hemisphere and are ground breaking.

Our values 
We want to highlight and promote all documentaries, but in particular: 
• Documentaries from Women in Film 
• Aboriginal and Indigenous documentaries 
• Asian cinema 
• LGBTI documentaries

Value for money 
While our film submission fee is in line and bench marked against other film festivals our incentives for the submitter are much higher than your average film festival.

Successful entries 
1 x Open Access Pass to all festival documentaries 
6 x tickets to selected documentaries at the festival (not redeemable for cash) 
Feedback on your documentary 
The opportunity to win cash prizes, distribution deals, wine, and DVD’s

Unsuccessful entries 
Complimentary double pass to selected documentaries at the festival (not redeemable for cash) 
Feedback on your documentary

Post-festival service 
We try to find other ways to show case your documentary at other festivals that we are aligned with, which gives you double the exposure for the same submission price (more value for money) and try to find distribution for you in Australia after you have completely finished your world-wide festival run.

The money we raise through sponsorship and submissions goes back into the Melbourne economy as a direct subsidy helping venues, printers, hotels and media partners that rely heavily on events like ours.

The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is Melbourne, Australia's first competitive documentary film festival and Melbourne's own dedicated documentary film festival.

Our mission is to discover and promote independent Australian documentaries, and to showcase the best international documentaries to Melbourne audiences. The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival provides a public forum and supportive platform to allow emerging filmmakers to showcase their work.

The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival aims to feature the freshest and most innovative documentaries from around the world, from short docs right through to feature length, award winning films. the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival looks to promote the best quality independent documentaries cinema has to offer.

The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival team looks forward to bringing you a diverse, challenging slate of documentaries that will entertain, educate and inform, providing our audience with a memorable, world class festival experience. The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is also one of the only film festivals in Australasia that provides feedback on submissions. The feedback is simple, straight forward and constructive (like a review) and gives you an insight into what the curators actually thought of your documentary. You can apply for feedback on your documentary and it will be available 12/07/2017.

The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is a 5 day competitive film festival to be held from 12th - 16th July 2017 at Cinema Nova, Howler and Long Play. For more information email info@mdff.org.au, Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mdffest

Testimonials from winning entries of the 2016 Melbourne Doc Fest

Melbourne is known worldwide as one of the greatest cultural cities on Earth. It was the birthplace of the longest feature film ever created at that time (The Kelly Gang 1908). People here understand the art of film.

It was great honor to be selected for competition at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival and it was a major career milestone to win Best Director and the Supreme Jury Prize for our movie A Billion Lives.

The amount of media attention this festival gets is unreal. While in Melbourne, I did radio interviews, magazine interviews, and had multiple critics review our film.

The festival is ambitious and well run. Lyndon, the festival director, goes to great lengths to care for the directors he’s chosen. He makes introductions to industry connections.

He helps films find distribution. Not only did I make great industry connections, but I made new friendships with other respected directors from around the world.

I look forward to next time.

Aaron Biebert, director, Supreme Jury Prize Award winner – A Billion Lives

It was an amazing experience to be a part of the Melbourne Doc Fest, winning "Best Australian Documentary" has really helped our film to gain notoriety and being able to connect with and meet all the other film professionals at the festival was an invaluable networking opportunity. We couldn't recommend it more highly to other documentary filmmakers.

Roland Fraval, producer, Best Australian Feature winner - Coffee Man 

The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is a competitive film festival and has 18 award categories, known as the Ozstars, which you can enter, they include:

Supreme Jury Prize Winner  
Best International Documentary  
Best Australian Documentary  
Best Australian Short Documentary  
Best International Short Documentary  
Best Melbourne Documentary (short and feature) 
Best Indigenous Documentary 
Best Music / Art Documentary 
Best Environmental Documentary 
Best Emerging Director 
Audience Choice Award (short and feature) 
Wildcard / Avante Garde Award 
Best Expanded Interdisciplinary Project

Documentary Photography 
Award Categories: 
Supreme Jury Prize Award - Photography 
Photo-Journalism: The news that doesn't make the news. 
Street Photography: All the dark nooks and crannies we see every day. 
Landscape: From concrete jungle to vast horizons. 
Portraiture: Is this my best side?

Prizes: 
Castagna Wine 
Supreme Jury Prize Award - $1,000 
Best Australian Short Documentary - $1000 
Supreme Jury Prize Award - Photography - $500 
Open Channel Memberships for Best Australian and Best Melbourne documentaries 
AIDC day passes for Best Australian and Best Melbourne documentaries 
Matsos Beer 
Melbourne Gin 
DVDs from Madman, Antidote Films, Monster Pictures 
Distribution deals on VOD with Beama Films