Hello Filmmaker!

This is Nat Dykeman, founder and director of The Lake County Film Festival. I handle just about everything involved with pre-festival setup. Founded in 2004, this is our 16th session.

If your Film Freeway profile included a phone number, it’s likely we’ve already spoken, but if not, CONGRATS on being selected for the 2026 Lake County Film Festival. Hopefully, this page will give you all the information you need to participate in the festival, but feel free to send me an email asking for additional information. I may add some answers to FAQs at the bottom later, but I’ll try not to have to send any mass emails this season.

Before I get into all of the information, one of the most important items is that you should please white-list lakecountyfilmfestival@gmail.com in your mail client! It seems like google doesn’t like us, and our messages are constantly shuffled off to spam folders.

Additionally, as a broad overview, you should know that we are a real film festival. We are in-person, you will receive two free badges, you don’t have to pay money for awards, we don’t give away a million awards, and there’s ALWAYS time for Q&As.

Onward!

• The festival runs March 12 – 23.
  However, given that Lake County is a bit of a cultural wasteland, the vast majority of films will be playing on those two Friday/Saturday/Sundays.
• All film programs screen twice at the College Of Lake County in Grayslake, IL
  which is about halfway between Chicago & Milwaukee. We will mostly have three screens running at a time during those weekends. Overall, this gives our audience members more flexibility in choosing what to see. This venue runs from PCs, so I will need simple HD files for exhibition here.
• Four additional screenings will be held at the Gorton Center in Lake Forest, IL. This is about 20 minutes East of the main venue. While the feature films are basically chosen for those, the Gorton Center will hand-select a collection of short films for one of their screenings, so some of you may screen a third time.
• We have a new, third venue: The Antioch Theater, in Antioch, IL.
  We should be having about 20 additional screenings at this venue, from March 12-18. We would love to have DCPs from feature films that are selected here. We will assemble DCPs ourselves for the shorts programs.
• Please do not share your selection until we officially announce, which will be around February 1. The current lineup is 21 features, and 13 programs of short films, which total more than 100 short films. There might be a few extra stragglers as well. You can see the current lineup if you’d like. A few titles (in bold), might move around, and there’s a couple of short film programs that need better titles.
• We will supply you with social media art that you can share. We usually use a “frame” instead of laurels. You can see examples here. If you check https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AKhUXSg4hLrY2ze3D7Ilhve9pBSxs27e around the time of announcement, you should find square and widescreen art. We also recommend using the hashtag #LCFF2026
• IMPORTANT! Website Information.
  We want to make sure everything is accurate, and spelled correctly on the website. You can see an example of our pages from last year here: https://2025.lakecountyfilmfestival.org/25-cats-from-qatar/
  Please fill out this form with all of your info as soon as possible: https://bit.ly/2026LCFFFilmmakerInfo
• Attendance/Hotels
  Because we are across two weekends, and everything screens twice, scheduling is a pretty large undertaking, but I LOVE challenges. If you are an out-of-towner thinking about attending (or a local filmmaker that has scheduling conflicts and/or wants to get a hotel in town), please fill out this form, and let me know WHICH WEEKEND is better for your schedule. I’m also attempting to get an idea of how many hotel nights we needs, so I can get the best rate possible. We usually get a rate between $85-$95, which is one of the lowest in the county.
• Other Filmmaker Events
  Both Saturdays and Sundays we have a meet-and-greet breakfast for filmmakers, VIPs, Staff, and Badge Holders. Typically these start at 10am, and the first films for the day start around noon, but we might pull this earlier to around 9am, so make room for some filmmaker panels. Do you have any ideas for panels that you’d like to either attend, or run? Drop me a line!
• Exhibition Copies
  I probably won’t start looking for exhibition copies until mid-February. As I mentioned, all the rooms at the College Of Lake County run on PCs using VLC, which can basically take any format handed to it. Obviously, mp4s and mov are most common. 1080p is fine, please keep features to around 100G, max.
  
  Please send all exhibition copies to: printtraffic@lakecountyfilmfestival.org
• Badges
  I won’t be looking for this info until the end of February, but please fill out this form so I can order printed badges. https://forms.gle/P2nQoUdEgGSGLt3o7
• Laurels
  You can find laurels at https://filmfreeway.com/laurels/45073/TheLakeCountyFilmFestival
  Password: LCFF
• Social Media.
  Here are the links to our social media. I’ll try to follow everyone back as well. As has been the case for a couple of years, we will not be posting on Twitter. A single pinned post about this year’s festival with link is the only thing that will be posted.
  
  https://www.facebook.com/LakeCountyFilmFestival
  https://www.instagram.com/lakecountyfilmfestival
  https://www.threads.net/@lakecountyfilmfestival
  https://bsky.app/profile/lakecountyff.bsky.social
  https://www.linkedin.com/company/28469130
  

Hopefully that’s everything you need to know about this year’s Lake County Film Festival.

Thanks so much for submitting your films, I can’t wait to show them all to everyone!

All the best,
Nat Dykeman
Director
Lake County Film Festival
www.lakecountyfilmfestival.org
lakecountyfilmfestival@gmail.com
224.544.9261

———————————–