Official Award Rules

Submitting a film is free. Voting is free. Membership is a separate, optional product that buys personal tools — watch history, saved lists, creator insights. It confers no advantage in any award cycle, and no weighting on any vote. Anyone who pays and later wins would have won without paying.

A film is eligible for a cash award in a cycle when it has been accepted into the program, its source is playable, the filmmaker has claimed or authorised the entry, and it has not already won a cash award in a previous cycle. Entries added by our staff as recommendations are screened and can be voted on, but cannot take money until the filmmaker claims them.

Awards are paid to the filmmaker or rights holder credited on the entry. Where we cannot verify who holds the rights, we do not pay until we can.

Every cycle has a fixed window. Only qualified votes — one per person per film, from a verified account, cast inside that window — count. Self-voting does not count. Films must clear a minimum number of qualified votes and a minimum positive share, both published on the cycle page, before they can win.

Ranking is by net score, then by positive share, then by fewest downvotes, then by earliest acceptance into the program. The same order is used on the Best Of lists, so the two can never contradict each other.

We review voting patterns before publishing a result. Coordinated or automated voting — bursts from newly created accounts, duplicate identities, purchased votes — leads to those votes being discounted and can disqualify an entry. Review is done by a person; nothing is disqualified automatically by a script.

We publish the standings only after a result is final. While a cycle is running, standings are private so a race cannot be gamed in its last hours.

Sixty percent of every membership payment we receive, calculated after tax on the amount actually received, is committed to the Artist Fund at the moment the payment clears. Awards are paid from that committed balance. The running accounting is public on the Artist Fund page.

The ledger behind those figures cannot be edited or deleted, including by us. Corrections are new, signed entries with a written reason.

Awards are paid in United States dollars. Before payment we may need tax and identity information required by law in the recipient’s country. Recipients are responsible for any tax owed on an award. If a recipient cannot be paid within ninety days of the announcement, the amount returns to the fund and is recorded as such.

We do not host or re-upload video. Every film plays through the filmmaker’s own YouTube or Vimeo page, and removal at the source removes it here. Accepting an award does not transfer any rights in the film to us. We keep the right to name the film and its filmmaker when announcing a result.

We may change these rules for future cycles; a cycle is judged under the rules published when it opened. We may void a cycle if the vote data is not trustworthy, in which case the committed money stays in the fund for the next one. Questions and disputes go through the report form, and we answer in writing.