“ continuing to grow the festival activities and more opportunities for filmmakers to connect with execs in the business and overall more high profile events,” Sol said. Fast forward to this year, the festival spans over nine days while screening 400 films out of the 5000 submissions they’ve received year round. The first Hollyshorts film festival screened 23 submissions during a two-day event. Sol and Dumont have organized the Academy Award-qualifying film festival since 2005, offering awards, prizes and opportunities to film creators from a multitude of different countries, including the U.K., Poland, Thailand, Canada and more. “I loved my time at CSUN and learned to persevere through adversity, finish off my degree which helped me and my first studio job at Lionsgate,” Sol said. He pursued a kinesiology degree and gained firsthand experience while working on film sets. “Mix that in with our love of movies, filmmaking, public relations, events and parties … It was only fitting we decided to try our hand at a film festival.”Īfter high school the pair moved to Los Angeles where Sol attended CSUN. “We learned to hustle at an early age,” Sol wrote in an email to the Sundial. They also rented out venues for parties and sold food and refreshments. Sol and Theo Dumont’s friendship dates back to their highschool days where they would host numerous different events such as movie nights and pay-per-view boxing fights. Throughout the hardships of the coronavirus pandemic, Sol and his partner Theo Dumont were able to organize the festival functionally and effectively online while still offering the same level of exposure and networking as in-person events. Past industry attendees include HBO, Kodak, Hulu, Netflix and Google Play. The show will feature various styles of short film, such as animation, documentary, music video and more. The event continues to provide an environment for networking opportunities in the film industry.ĭaniel Sol, CSUN alumni and co-founder of the HollyShorts Film Festival, is hosting the 17th annual festival at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres from Sept. HollyShorts has become one of Los Angeles’ more prominent film festivals in the recent decade, growing in size every year, along with the number of submissions and awards given to the film winners.

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