By JOHN JURGENSEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 29, 2005; Page P2

Hollywood probably won't be descending on Delaware in November for the annual film festival in Rehoboth Beach. But filmmakers from around the world, on a quest for distribution, will be showing their work there.

As North America's major film festivals at Sundance and Toronto become more crowded -- submissions to Sundance have quadrupled in the past 10 years -- it's increasingly difficult for small films to break into them. Some filmmakers are trying a different route for distributor attention: racking up screenings and, they hope, awards at lower-profile fests.

"Boys of Baraka"

One filmmaking team succeeded with this approach this past week. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady finalized a deal with ThinkFilm for their documentary called "Boys of Baraka," about four children from Baltimore transplanted to a reform school in Kenya. The filmmakers showed their movie at 19 festivals from Birmingham, Ala., to Bergen, Norway, and picked up 10 awards. In November, the film will be distributed in at least 10 cities. (It will also air next summer on PBS; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded the project.

About 650 film festivals take place in the U.S. annually, 200 more than five years ago, according to an estimate by FilmFestivals.com, which monitors the events.

But there is no guarantee of success on this circuit. This year, "Strike the Tent," a Civil War romance, has won awards in each of the eight completed festivals it has appeared in. But so far, no deal. "You want as many people to see it as possible," says Julian Adams, who wrote, directed and starred in the movie. But such exposure can be risky, he says, because major festivals often won't admit films for competition that have premiered elsewhere.

Still, some regional festivals have become more influential. The Hamptons International Film Festival on Long Island raised its profile after the low-budget "Open Water" premiered there in 2003 and went on to become a hit. Last week, director Ali Selim won the festival's audience award when his movie "Sweet Land" had its debut there. "I always thought that if we started at a bigger festival that we might get lost, because it's a quiet little film," he says.