DEFF - A crowd standing outside of a small town theater to attend Down East Flick Fest

Down East Flick Fest’s

10th Anniversary

A Decade of Reels and Heart: Uniting Community and Celebrating All the Arts!

SINCE 2014

Film Categories

  • Man sitting on his porch in a rocking chair. Glass of sweet iced tea on a wooden table.

    Sweet Tea Films: Heritage. Heart. Humanity.

  • Group therapy under warm lights

    Community Impact Films: Where Stories Change Things

  • An elderly man and a young boy looking through a window with a distressed white wooden frame, smiling and posing inside a brick building, with trees visible outside.

    Moments That Matter: The Quiet Ones Stay With You

  • An older woman with gray hair styled in dreadlocks, wearing a colorful, patterned outfit and multiple necklaces, is sitting on the floor and speaking to a group of diverse people. The group, consisting of men, women, and children, is attentively listening and sitting closely around her in a cozy, warmly lit living room.

    Storyteller's Cinema: Every Voice. Every Truth.

  • A woman adjusting a studio light in front of a digital display with a projected image of a person and handwritten text, set against a blue background.

    Poetry Films: When Words Become Vision

  • An old, abandoned two-story house with peeling paint and broken windows, surrounded by leafless trees and overgrown bushes, under a dark, ominous sky.

    Southern Gothic/Southern Surreal: Where the South Gets Strange

  • Vintage film projector emitting light from the lens, with the text 'Your Story. Your Way.' alongside in a dark setting.

    Unapologetic Films: Your Story. Your Way.

  • A young woman with curly hair sleeping at a cluttered desk surrounded by art supplies, cups, and papers, with colorful, fantastical images of galaxies, swirling colors, sea creatures, and birds appearing to emerge from her head.

    Animation: Every World Begins Somewhere

Down East Flick Fest is Moving into Its Boldest Chapter Yet

DEFF 2026-27 brings a renewed commitment to the filmmakers, communities, and stories that make independent film matter. We are expanding our reach, deepening our partnerships, and building a festival experience that serves both the art and the people behind it.

What’s New and Coming in 2026

DEFF is proud to announce a collaboration with the North Carolina Poetry Society, bringing the worlds of film and literary art into direct conversation. This partnership reflects our belief that story does not belong to one form and that the most powerful creative communities are built across disciplines.

This season’s Sweet Tea Award and Community Impact Award honoree Keith Flynn — poet, essayist, performer, and NC literary institution — embodies exactly that vision. His recognition marks a new direction for DEFF, one that honors creative impact beyond the screen while keeping independent film at the center of everything we do.

Venue and date details coming soon.

People sitting in an antique movie theater watching a film

DEFF will reopen for submissions September 2026

Down East Flick Fest proudly accepts entries on FilmFreeway, the world's #1 way to enter film festivals and creative contests.

Blue gradient background with white text that says 'Click to Submit on FilmFreeway' and the FilmFreeway logo.

2026 Sweet Tea Award & Community Impact Award Honoree

2026 Sweet Tea Award & Community Impact Award Honoree

Photograph of a man with gray beard and hair, wearing a brown shirt, smiling against a blue background, framed with a black and gold plaque. The plaque reads '2026 Honoree, Community Impact Award, Sweet Tea Award.'

Keith Flynn

Some stories need a page. Some need a stage. Some need a screen. Keith Flynn has always understood that the most powerful stories need all three.

For four decades Keith Flynn has made North Carolina’s artistic voice louder, bolder, and more impossible to ignore. Poet. Essayist. Rock lyricist. Literary journal founder. NC Distinguished Poet. His work has never lived in just one room and neither has his impact.

Down East Flick Fest is proud to honor Keith Flynn with both the 2026 Sweet Tea Award and the Community Impact Award, recognizing a body of work as rooted in this state’s soil as it is reaching toward something larger.

Read Keith’s full story →

About Down East Flick Fest

Down East Flick Fest (DEFF) is a festival for short and feature-length independent films. This juried event welcomes experienced and emerging filmmakers of all genres, with winners recognized in each category. Drama, comedy, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, animation, experimental, and documentary are among our established categories. We also include categories that represent trends in the industry and audience favorites including Poetry Films, Storyteller Cinema, Southern Gothic and Southern Surreal, Sweet Tea Films, Moments That Matter, Community Impact Films, Child-friendly, Faith-based, and Unapologetic Films — for films by filmmakers from marginalized, underrepresented, or culturally specific communities telling their own stories in their own voice.

Down East Flick Fest is dedicated to providing an annual, user-friendly showcase for independent filmmakers, writers, actors, and artists of every kind. We discover, support, and inspire independent filmmakers while introducing our audiences to new works that surprise, challenge, and move them.

We create opportunities that support emerging talent, celebrate experienced voices, and build ongoing connections between artists and the audiences who need their work.

We believe every story deserves a screen. Every filmmaker deserves a room full of people ready to receive what they have made. Every audience deserves to encounter a film that changes something in them, however small, however quietly.

DEFF is that place.

We are growing, evolving, and building something that lasts. We welcome sponsors, partners, and collaborators who share our commitment to independent film and the communities that make it possible.

Contact us at info@downeastflickfest.org

Be sure to read the descriptions for each category and submit accordingly. All filmmakers will receive notification of the status of their films.

We continue to develop collaborative projects and partnerships to celebrate all the arts. Promote your craft, network, and learn from industry professionals at DEFF 2026. We offer online screenings, workshops, and panels. However, we realize that nothing replaces the synergy of a live screening, so we host in-person screenings with your safety in mind. Ask us about our virtual training on film financing options.

Our Mission

Down East Flick Fest:

A Powerful Way to Showcase YOUR Film

DEFF gives you the ability to build an audience for your work. Get exposure to industry professionals and grow your career. Designed as a portal for emerging filmmakers to get feedback on their craft and for experienced filmmakers to grow and share their expertise, it is unique. We understand the value of each individual creative force. Every film selected for the fest is included because it offers a creative vision that will connect with an audience that will love it or appreciate it.

The Sweet Tea Award

The Sweet Tea Films celebrate stories rooted in heritage, grounded in community, and generous in spirit. Inspired by the storytelling traditions of the American South, this category welcomes films from every culture that honor place, memory, family, resilience, hospitality, and human connection. Whether intimate or epic, joyful or heartbreaking, these stories remind us that the most meaningful journeys often begin at home and reach far beyond it.

The Community Impact Award

The Community Impact Award recognizes work that does more than tell a story. It recognizes work that changes something. In the community. In the conversation. In the people who encounter it.

 

DEFF established this award to shine a light on filmmakers and artists whose work refuses to look away from the difficult, the overlooked, and the necessary. It is our highest recognition of creative courage.

Both awards will be presented to our 2026 Honoree, Keith Flynn at the DEFF 2026-27 awards ceremony.

Details coming soon…