Frankfort48 Film Contest

We are so excited to announce the 8th Annual Frankfort48 Film Contest.

June 27-29, 2025

FRIDAY, June 27 @ 9am: Kickoff at The Garden. Participants will be given a (1) line from a movie, (2) prop, and (3) location to creatively incorporate in their film.

SUNDAY, June 29 @ 8:59am: All submissions are due

SCREENING AND AWARD ANNOUNCEMENTS - Gather at The Garden to screen all the created shorts and award winners! Films showing SUNDAY, June 29 @7:30pm.

Frankfort48 Prizes

Cash and prizes are awarded to the top three Frankfort48 filmmakers:

First place - $1,000 and two VIP passes to the Frankfort Film Festival
Second place - $250
Third place - $100

Frankfort48 Entry

Please complete the form here or email KATIE JONES (kjones@gardentheater.org) to sign up to participate.

Maximum of 20 entrants.

Filmmakers must attend the Frankfort48 Kickoff Meeting at The Garden on Friday, June 27th at 9am.

8th Annual Frankfort48 Judges

SierrA Falconer

Sierra Falconer is a Los Angeles based filmmaker from Traverse City, Michigan. She holds a BFA in film history from Wesleyan University and an MFA in film directing from UCLA. Her feature directorial debut, Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake), premiered in competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where she was named one of the top breakout voices by IndieWire. Sierra is so excited to be apart of the Frankfort48 Film Contest!

Grant Myers

Raised in Washington DC, seasoned in Los Angeles, and now living in Traverse City, Grant Pierce Myers has been a professional screenwriter for nearly 15 years. A graduate of the New York Film Academy and Boston University’s College of Communication, Grant has written for Warner Bros., Sony, Universal, and most notably wrote the screenplay for 20th Century Fox’s 2014 hit The Maze Runner, starring Dylan O’Brien. Recently Grant adapted the hit book series The Animorphs, which will hopefully hit the big screen in 2026. Grant has been coming to Frankfort since he was a baby, and watched many of his favorite films for the first time at the Garden Theater. A local “premier” of The Maze Runner was even held at the Garden Theater in 2014, so the Theater holds a special place in his heart.

Michael Mittelstaedt

Michael Mittelstaedt is a filmmaker and the founding director of Film and New Media at Interlochen Center for the Arts, an arts boarding school for ambitious young artists from around the world. His accomplished alumni produce, write, shoot and cut for Netflix, Amazon, Dreamworks, Hulu, Disney Studios, and Skywalker Sound. Previous to his work at Interlochen Center, Michael was producer/director of television and documentaries at Broadview Media, Chicago.

Deeply invested in the value of community, identity and collaboration as they relate to creative and personal development, Michael was selected to present at SXSWEDU in 2019 for innovative applications of these values he designed for his curriculum in teaching visual story and collaboration,

An advocate for regional filmmakers, Michael was appointed by the governor of Michigan to the Michigan Film Commission Advisory Council to help shape the direction of the future of film in the state.

In 2020, Michael launched the Cinema Collective, an influential network of alumni and teaching artists, whose mission is to cultivate and produce new works of cinema each year; principal photography of the Collective’s production begins this spring.

When he is not teaching, Michael works toward completion of his western, Chasing Daylight / chasingdaylightmovie.com