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Down East Flick Fest is Moving into It’s 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:
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.
DEFF will reopen for submissions September 2026.
2026 Sweet Tea Award &
Community Impact Award Honoree
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 the Festival
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.
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 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.
