How a Respected Film Festival Became a Scam (Allegedly) — The Oaxaca Film Fest Story
By: Sam Kench
Tags: Oaxaca, Filmmaking, Scam, Film Festival, Scandal

This is the story of a major film festival that began from humble origins with good intentions. A film festival that ran successfully for a decade, earning the respect and acclaim of independent filmmakers and screenwriters around the world. A film festival that was rocked by natural disaster, protested by the local population… and quietly turned into an alleged scheme to suck money out of creatives by preying upon their dreams, ambitions, and kind hearts. This is the story of the Oaxaca Film Festival.

The video version of this story

As an independent filmmaker myself, I have a modicum of experience with film festivals. I have largely had positive experiences, but I can tell you from firsthand experience that film festival scams are real and they are prominent. It is an issue that doesn’t really get talked about. When submitting to a film festival, you need to do a fair bit of research to weed out the “fake” festivals and get to the real ones. These “fake” film fests pop up on the main submission platform of Film Freeway and formerly on WithoutABox before it was shut down. The easiest ways to detect a scam festival are to check the number of years the festival has been in operation (scam festivals don’t usually go beyond their “1st annual” iteration), look for an external website for the festival, look into the festival’s staff, and ensure that they have a venue.

Even with legitimate film festivals, the entry fees can be costly and they add up quickly. After submitting, the notification date to find out if you were accepted or how you placed in the competition is more often than not several months away, frequently taking the better part of a year.

With most “fake” festivals, they will accept your entry fee, then proceed to quietly sever all forms of communication and eventually disappear off of the Film Freeway platform altogether. Some of these “fake” festivals will send blanket-rejection letters to all applicants, others will send mass acceptance letters to every applicant, the end result however is the same. The showcase of filmmaker work that was promised never comes to fruition or does at a greatly reduced scale. They might promise to send out the submitted work to the “industry professionals in their network”, which, as you would guess, means nothing in this context. It’s a good “fake perk” to promise because they don’t need to show any proof or produce any results.

I ran an experiment through Film Freeway, and the results were… worrying. It’s arguable whether or not the platform should have any accountability for the scams run on it, but I would say that, at the very least, they shouldn’t make it so easy for these scams to put together and carried out.

In my experiment, I jumped to the other side of things. I took on the role of a festival director establishing a new, 1st annual film festival. It was extremely easy and required little to no verification. Within an hour and a half, I was ready to publish this made-up film festival and begin collecting money from any unsuspecting creatives trying to pursue their dreams. I had set up a bunch of awards categories with different entry fees and deadlines, I had promised a 3-day festival at a large venue, cash prizes for the award winners, and the dissemination of submitted projects to “industry connections”. And Film Freeway went, yeah cool. You ready to publish this thing? No proof of staff, no proof of venue, or verification of prizes, or awards, or dates.

Publishing this fake festival and sharing it around with some legitimate social media marketing is all it would take to make a quick buck with little to no consequence. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but this is where my experiment ended. I, of course, did not publish the fake festival. But I was surprised by how easy it would have been to do.

When I was younger, I fell for a couple of these festival scams and had to learn my lesson the hard way. They get easier to spot as you see more of them… but the Oaxaca Film Festival was different. It was different in a number of ways, perhaps the most important being that it did not start out as a scam.

The first edition of the Oaxaca Film Festival was held all the way back in 2010, and the festival has run annually ever since with the 10th festival taking place this year, in 2020. For the vast majority of its existence, the Oaxaca Film Festival has been a legitimate, well-respected film festival, even becoming known as one of the biggest and best festivals in the level right below the top-tier fests like Sundance and Cannes. Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Guillermo Del Toro, and Takashi Miike have all shown their films in the Oaxaca Film Festival, and the fest was also named one of the “50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee” by MovieMaker magazine, which is a prestigious list to be on as a festival, and a trustworthy source to turn to as a filmmaker. The Oaxaca Film Festival even forged a partnership with the Sundance Film Festival for a time, and the two were integrated with shared workshops. This was a beloved festival for many years.

The festival typically ran for 8 days, give or take, and took place in the festival’s namesake of Oaxaca Mexico. A beautiful, culturally rich setting that could make attending the festival a wonderful experience even if you didn’t attend a single screening. These 8 days were filled with a mix of film screenings, parties with open bars, dinners, networking events, workshops and labs, Q&As, pitch events, the awards ceremony, and even guided tours of the nearby Oaxacan pyramids and of the local food and art scenes. The festival itinerary was jam-packed, with each and every moment of these 8 days being filled. At its inception, the festival was great for the local economy, a real boon to Oaxacan tourism.

Most years of the Oaxaca Film Festival’s operation went smoothly and the festival grew year after year. There were no massive scandals in the early years but there were minor issues, such as some filmmakers having their films accepted and flying all the way to Oaxaca, only for their film to not end up screening, or being re-scheduled to an unenviable time slot or moved to a hard to reach venue. The festival staff chalked this up to logistics and improper scheduling, running out of time to show every accepted film. They also stated that they would try to arrange screenings at later dates for any films that were not shown during their scheduled festival slot. I was unable to confirm whether or not these rain-check screenings ended up taking place.

Now, I’ll get into my personal experience with the festival. I became involved as a participant in the 8th edition of the Oaxaca Film Festival (the 2017 edition). I saw them on the aforementioned “50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee” list from MovieMaker and I submitted my short script Snow Day. The entry fee was $11.99.

Fast forward a couple of months, and my script gets chosen as a finalist in the best drama category AND is in the running for the Best Overall Script award in the Global Script Challenge. These are two different competitions that are both related to the Oaxaca Film Festival. I only paid to enter one of them, but the festival staff chose my script for both competitions at no extra charge. This is noteworthy because, in the most recent Oaxaca Film Festivals, they began charging additional entry fees just for filmmakers to be eligible to compete in the categories that they thought they had already paid to enter with their initial entry fees. Also, in the 2017 festival, my $11.99 entry fee secured me a spot in the Oaxaca pitch fest, whereas in 2020, the pitch fest came with another cost. There’s obviously nothing illegal in this change, this isn’t where the festival became a scam, but it does demonstrate a clear change in business practices between the 2017 and 2020 festival cycles.

I should note that throughout the 2017 festival, the Oaxaca Film Fest staff I was in communication with were extremely hospitable and provided some of the best customer service I have experienced from any film festival. Some of the communications I received were mass emails and/or form letters, but the majority of them were personal messages delivered from actual humans, I considered this especially impressive given they had more than 7,000 submissions in that cycle.

But next come the travel packages. The festival offers and heavily promotes filmmaker travel packages for attending the festival. The package includes a stay in a 4-star hotel local to the festival for the duration of the event, it includes private transportation to and from the airport, specially curated meals, walking tours, access to additional conferences and workshops, and a few other perks. You aren’t required as a filmmaker to pay for this package, you can arrange your own accommodations, but the festival does heavily push this travel package.

So, what does this travel package cost? It is a $449 total cost with a $149 deposit required. For point of reference, a stay in the festival’s chosen hotel for the duration of the event costs approximately $362, though rates do fluctuate. The remaining costs of the travel package go toward covering the other various perks, which seems pretty fair to me. In the year I participated, the festival definitely tried to hard-sell this package, and they really tried to rush filmmakers into making a decision. The first email I received about the travel package, of many, required me to book it by the following morning if I wanted it. They also tried to sell a travel package upgrade later on at a different hotel for an additional $179.

I can’t speak as to whether or not the travel package was worthwhile in the 2017 edition of the festival, for reasons I will get into shortly, but there are numerous accounts of the travel packages being outright scams in the 2019 and 2020 editions of the festival.

A number of filmmakers purchased the travel packages, flew to Oaxaca, and arrived at the hotel, only to find the specified hotel to not have any record of their reservations and charging their full rate for lodging on top of the amount already paid for the travel package. When asked directly, the hotel denied having any arrangement with the festival whatsoever. Many filmmakers were left without lodging or forced to pay the additional room rates.

During the 2019 festival, the board members of the festival stated that they would reimburse the cost of lodging to the affected filmmakers. After months, many filmmakers reported ongoing issues with receiving their reimbursement. The festival eventually claimed that everybody affected had been successfully reimbursed, but many non-reimbursed attendees objected to this claim. Other filmmakers reported much difficulty and back and forth arguing with the festival director, but eventually found success in securing the reimbursement.

This was not the experience that everybody had with the 2019 festival. Since my personal involvement with the festival ended, for the most part, with the 2017 festival, I reached out to Keri Lee, a fellow screenwriter who went in-person to both the 2018 and 2019 editions of the festival. She got the travel package both years and did not experience the reported issues with said travel packages. She said the 2018 festival was great, and the 2019 festival was definitely more chaotic, for reasons I’ll get into shortly, but not to the degree that it was enough to ruin the entire experience.

Let’s jump back to the 2017 edition for a moment. The one truly questionable aspect of the 2017 festival came inside an email with the subject line: “$10 for Absolutely Nothing!”.

This email was sent out to every participating filmmaker and screenwriter, and in it, the festival board was asking for $10 donations from everyone. It strikes me as extremely unorthodox to charge people entry fees, then ask them to donate additional money, especially while they’re competing to win prize money. And perhaps even more strange was the decision to frame this money begging as being for “absolutely nothing” in return. They sent me a total of six emails over the course of one week, each one asking for a $10 donation. This whole angle did not sit right with me and, needless to say, I did not Paypal them $10 as requested.

The reason why I can’t report on my experience with the 2017 travel package is because… the 2017 Oaxaca Film Festival didn’t happen. The event was canceled following three massive earthquakes that severely damaged the city of Oaxaca.

2017 Oaxaca Earthquakes

After the first earthquake happened, the festival director released a statement saying the damage was extensive, but that Oaxaca is a resilient city, and that the festival would still happen without any interruptions or changes. Then, within the next 10 days, two more earthquakes had struck Oaxaca. The second and third earthquakes caused far more destruction and devasted the local infrastructure.

This was a natural disaster and a complete tragedy. Hundreds of locals lost their lives and thousands of buildings were damaged or completely destroyed. Following the final earthquake, the 8th edition of the Oaxaca Film Festival was postponed indefinitely, AKA: canceled. The festival director and board handled this about as well as they possibly could have. They canceled all of the events, encouraged people to cancel their travel plans, refunded travel packages and facilitated refunds from hotels, and they provided a document that filmmakers could present to whichever airline they had booked their flights with to secure a refund on their travel expenses.

Amidst this tragedy, The Oaxaca Film Festival staff remained committed to fairness and transparency in regards to the affected filmmakers. It was commendable, and it makes it all the more surprising that just a couple of years later, the festival would begin using shady tactics, refusing promised reimbursements, and flat out scamming unsuspecting filmmakers, allegedly. Following the earthquakes, the festival director called the event a “possible festival killer” and estimated the loss of revenue for the festival and the local economy to be in the excess of two million dollars. It was unclear if there would ever be a 9th edition of the Oaxaca Film Festival.

As it turns out, the earthquakes would not be a “festival killer”, but they just might have killed the festival’s good intentions and transparency, as the majority of the bad practices and potentially illegal activity began with the festival’s return from this tragedy.

Protests interrupted the 2019 Oaxaca Film Fest

The 2019 festival was caught up in a large-scale protest from locals against the governor of Oaxaca. These protests led to the shutdown of one of the festival’s theaters, resulting in the cancellation of many film screenings whose creators had traveled from other countries to see their film shown on the big screen. Some canceled screenings were rescheduled and/or moved to other venues, while other accepted filmmakers claim their films simply never screened at all. Festival leadership denies this happening, despite claims from several unrelated filmmakers, promising that all accepted films were screened at some point.

A second, unrelated protest was also mounted before the end of the festival. This second protest interrupted the award ceremony and was geared directly against the film festival itself and one of their main sponsors: Minera Cuzcatlán, a mining company that is alleged to be responsible for acts of strong-arm violence and for polluting local water sources. The Oaxaca Film Festival did eventually cut ties with the company following the protests.

Keri Lee, who saw the protests first-hand, said they definitely contributed to the general sense of chaos during the 2019 festival. She said the troubles with the 2019 festival seemed to negatively impact the filmmakers more than the screenwriters, as their screenings were moved, rescheduled, or potentially canceled. She said of her experience, quote, “The downsides from my perspective were mainly in 2019 and almost all were logistical… as that week went on, they started wearing on people. Especially filmmakers who didn’t always get the greatest crowds or technical equipment etc.”

Some attendees suggest that even if the protests had been taken out of the equation, the 2019 festival would still have been a poorly organized, administrative mess. According to The Hollywood Reporter, many attending filmmakers rebranded the Oaxaca Film Festival as the Oaxaca Fyre Festival. During the 2019 edition, the film festival claimed to have deals in place with HBO, UTA, TBS, and Viacom. The festival suggested potential distribution and acquisition deals with these companies and suggested that executives from these businesses would be present to hear pitches during the festival’s movie pitch event. When The Hollywood Reporter launched an investigation into this, they, “confirmed that there currently is no relationship between them and the fest.” They also noted that after they began asking questions, the logos for these companies were removed from the Oaxaca Film Festival website’s “Industry Alliances” page.

In 2019, in-person attendance was mandatory for all participating filmmakers, which was not the case in previous years, and is by no means standard operating procedure for film festivals. I personally find it quite strange and more than a little suspect considering that they demanded proof of filmmaker travel arrangements while constantly pushing their own travel packages, which in 2019 increased further in price. Instead of the $449 travel package offered in 2017, there were now multiple travel packages offered, with the most expensive costing $799, with an initial $199 deposit required at the base rate. And, this time if you wanted to bring a guest along, it cost an additional $399.

It is hard to not see the in-person attendance mandate as anything other than a dirty tactic to sell more of these overpriced travel packages, which, if you recall from earlier, were the same travel packages that hotels did not always recognize, leading to some filmmakers needing to then pay the full room rates for the duration of their stays.

One additional shady detail is that the festival actually charged more for these travel packages to what they called “legacy filmmakers”. Keri was one of these “legacy filmmakers”. This is just their term for filmmakers who had been a part of the festival in previous years. Why returning filmmakers had to pay more was never explained, but Keri did say she believed the Legacy Filmmaker package came with a couple of extra perks.

Some called into question the legacy filmmaker program and the in-person attendance mandate. After the event concluded, members of the festival staff put out a statement that stopped just short of apologizing for this policy. They said, “it is not who we are as a festival,” and they also said that the in-person attendance mandate and higher costs for returning filmmakers would not return in subsequent festivals. This is them clearly acknowledging the policy as problematic.

And the pitch event, which was previously included for all accepted filmmakers, was now an added charge, costing an additional $30 for each project pitched. This was on top of an additional $13 charged to filmmakers to be eligible for consideration in a competition that they thought their initial entry fee was implied to include. There was confusion as additional fees for additional sub-competitions were added throughout. The festival also promoted various upselling options, including charging $99 for a project to receive a written review on IMDb and charging another $29.99 for what they called the “industry partners program”, which was just a simplified version of a program that was included in the initial cost of the festival in 2017 and earlier. Keri participated in the pitch fest in both years and said her experiences were great, and that the people hearing her pitches were definitely industry professionals.

Attendance rates were not just higher than normal because of the in-person attendance mandate. Another way the festival sacrificed good intentions and transparency for the sake of money in 2019 was by accepting more films than in previous years. Far more films, in fact. The 2019 edition of the Oaxaca Film Fest accepted approximately five times the number of films as the previous edition, despite not increasing their venues, staff, or scheduled time frame to anywhere near the same degree. This obviously was a major contributor to the logistical problems faced by the festival.

Five times more films accepted means five times more filmmakers and their guests being required to attend in-person with proof of their travel plans, which means far more sales of their questionable travel packages.

They sold out of these overpriced travel packages, by the way. Once they ran out of travel packages, they began selling basic ticket packages, no longer including any form of lodging. The emails sent out about the basic ticket packages said, “Now Available for Just $99.”

However, once you looked into it, you would find that the basic ticket package actually required a deposit of $99, with a total cost of $399 dollars. And, keep in mind that this is the pricing for filmmakers who have films screening in the festival. It’s no wonder the festival accepted five times more films when they were making this much money off of every filmmaker, all of whom are required to attend. For point of reference, the vast majority of film festivals provide free passes to all accepted filmmakers.

Since I was also technically considered one of their “Legacy Filmmakers”, I was one of the targets of this marketing push, and the emails they sent out were constant. They sometimes sent out several emails in a single day. After three weeks had passed without me biting on their $399 ticket package, they then said, okay wait, hang on, how about a $200 discount? Yes, they reduced their price from $399 to $199, if nothing else, proving that the $399 price was grossly over-inflated in the first place.

When I didn’t bite on that one either, they raised the price back up to $299, but this time, that included bringing a guest along at no extra charge. Throughout this whole process, almost every single one of the dozens of emails I received included something to the effect of “this is the final deadline” or “you must purchase a package today or you will be locked out of the festival”. And, of course, that deadline kept moving back regardless.

When I still didn’t respond to any of these offers, they then shifted gears and offered me money. They sent me an email saying, “would you like $4,000 USD to offset your cost of (your short film)? Would you like a complimentary hotel package for 2 including FULL VIP ACCESS to (the festival)?… would you like an hour meeting with Industry representative(s) who want to discuss collaborating with you?” The email did not go into further detail, it only encouraged me to “contact immediately”.

When I did reach out for more information, I was told that this was actually for an additional sub-competition, which again, had its own entry fee, and that four lucky projects would receive the hotel package and one-hour meeting, and one would project would win the $4,000. All I had to do to enter was Paypal them $12.99. Great.

There were plenty of questionable happenings with the 2019 festival, but it was the 2020 festival that reached into alleged outright scam territory.

When they began the advertising push for the 2020 edition of the Oaxaca Film Fest, they again claimed to have partnered with HBO, Viacom, and UTA, despite that claim being proven false the previous year. Throughout the lead-up to the 2020 festival, I received constant emails getting progressively pushier and more aggressive as time went on, urging me to sign up for this year’s pitch fest, which of course came with an increased entry fee.

Worth noting is that this year, instead of all of the emails coming directly from Oaxaca Film Fest email labels, a number of them came labeled as “CEO” and were signed “Ramiz Adeeb Azar”, who is the founder, CEO, and festival director. These emails quickly began to seem like complete spam. With the subject line: “incredible opportunity awaits”, it’s hard to not view this as Oaxaca sending out inarguable spam.

As the emails continued, the claims got larger. The festival began claiming partnerships with Netflix, Amazon, and Apple TV. You can understand why many were skeptical of the veracity of this given the festival’s past track record with lying about partnerships.

I received one email stating these were the final hours to register for the pitch fest… then I continued to receive emails urging me to register for the pitch fest for months. I guess they didn’t specify how many “final hours” there were to be fair.

Final deadline June 30th- Oh wait, now it ends August 31st- Oh, hang on, it got moved back to September 6th- Oh, wait a second, now the deadline is September 30th- Ah, I see, now the deadline is the 30th of October- Oh, never mind, now the deadline is November 30th…. The Oaxaca film festival became one of those stores that are perpetually going out of business, except in this store, you don’t even get what you paid for.

Throughout this push to pay for the pitch fest, the CEO was also asking for donations and consistently claiming that, “all proceeds raised go to help local filmmaking community effected by Covid-19.” This was called into question immediately for a number of reasons, the first being that these emails were targeting independent filmmakers… but were supposedly donating to those same independent filmmakers? I’m not sure that tracks. More importantly, no evidence has been provided of any donations being made or any evidence to suggest that the funds raised went toward helping anyone at all in any capacity. The festival is not aligned with any charities and provided no insight into the plan for disbursement or utilization of these supposed charitable funds. It has not been proven, but many are alleging that the CEO, Mr. Ramiz Pour Azar, who also goes by the name Ramiz Adeeb Azar, may be lining his own pockets with these proceeds. Again, this is the allegation, it has not been proven.

This activity is clearly shady, especially when paired with the festival director constantly changing emails, ditching the old ones so he can’t be contacted, pulling the Oaxaca Film Festival’s social media presence, cutting all forms of viable contact, and scrubbing the site’s website and Film Freeway page.

The Festival is still on Film Freeway, seemingly unaffected by the dozens of disgruntled filmmakers who have lodged complaints with Film Freeway against The Oaxaca Film Fest. When I entered in 2017, there was a section at the bottom of the Film Freeway page full of 5-star reviews and glowing testimonials from participants. Now, that entire section is gone. What is the point of hosting customer reviews for others to make informed decisions, if the festival can choose to hide the reviews?

In 2017, the Oaxaca film festival website was full of information, photos of the events, testimonials, schedules, full lists of the films and scripts accepted in the current cycle and the winners of the previous cycles, and every finalist even got their profile and project pages. Now, there is no information about the festival or the participants whatsoever and even the winners of the previous festival cycles have been expunged.

Any suspicions I had about the management of the film festival were all but confirmed on December 14th, when a joint letter was published by 14 former Oaxaca Film Festival staff members. They joined together to formally distance themselves from the current management of the festival and to condemn the actions of the founder and CEO Ramiz Pour Azar, AKA Ramiz Adeeb Azar. If you want to read the full letter, this is it.

They say they are concerned about the current management and activities of the festival. They clarify that for more than six months, the Oaxaca Film Festival has been run solely by Ramiz Pour Azar, despite him never making this public.

They, “disclaim any responsibility or relationship regarding any actions conducted by Mr. Ramiz Pour Azar (AKA Ramiz Adeeb Azar). We also state that his actions do not reflect in any way the work and values that we proudly cultivated until the 10th edition in 2019;” They also clarify that the claims of fundraising to support local filmmakers and families are entirely the doing of Mr. Azar.

They close the letter by stating that they share the concerns expressed by the filmmaking community over the, “selection process, management, accountability, and destination of the funds collected during this fundraising.”

That’s where the situation is currently. I put this together because I wanted to spotlight the issue, and because there are so many deceitful people out there who try to take advantage of the dreams of creatives. If that is what is happening in this instance, and if we can put an end to it and return the collected funds to those allegedly scammed, then I think that’s a worthwhile endeavor.