Student Academy Awards Scholarship

The Student Academy Awards is an international student film competition. Each year, college and university film students from all over the world compete for awards and cash grants, with films being judged in the following categories:

Animation, Documentary, Live Action Narrative and Alternative/Experimental.

Past Student Academy Award winners have gone on to win 15 Oscars and receive 67 Oscar nominations. Past SAA winners include Pete Docter, Robert Zemeckis, Patricia Riggen, Patricia Cardoso and Spike Lee.

Last year's Student Academy Awards Ceremony took place on Tuesday, October 24, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

1. The SAAs honor up to three credited directors. If your film has more than three directors, please submit the names of up to three who are the most responsible for creative direction of the project. If there are any credit discrepancies or controversies, the Academy will insist that credits be settled before the film may be considered for an award. The Academy will not be bound by any contract or agreement relating to the sharing or giving of credit, and reserves the right to make its own determination of credit for purposes of SAA consideration.
2. Entry forms and films must be submitted digitally via FilmFreeway.com
3. Films must be viewable on FilmFreeway. They can either be uploaded as a video file or pasted as a URL from Vimeo or YouTube only. If one of the latter, please enable your privacy settings to allow your film to be embedded
4. You must supply your faculty advisor's name and email when asked. Do not provide your email in lieu of theirs. They will be contacted to verify your film and student status.
5. Each film must be submitted to one category only. If a film is determined to be in an incorrect category, it will be reassigned to the correct category.
6. Films advancing to the semifinal round of judging will be asked for the below additional formats. Preferred media specs can be found by visiting the following page: Technical Specifications. Any hard media provided will be returned to the entrant after the competition ends. Any hard media provided will be returned to the entrant after the competition ends.
   1. An HD or UHD digital video file (we would like the best source available)
   2. A DCP
   3. English closed captioning (required for all semi-finalists)
   4. English subtitles (required for all non-English content)
   5. English audio description audio file (if it is available for your film)
7. Failure to satisfy all the entry requirements will result in disqualification.

SUBMISSION PROCESS

If the film meets the automatically qualified criteria from above, it can be submitted directly to the competition by the student without taking any other steps. If the film does not meet the automatically qualified criteria, it must qualify for the competition in one of two ways: through school waivers or through film festival qualifying.