Overseas festivals may not increase local audiences, says Australian Film Festival director

Barry Watterson, director of the new Australian Film Festival, says that filmmakers and distributors try to generate buzz by doing the international festival circuit, but that’s no guarantee of local box office success.

“We had a few filmmakers say they wanted to do overseas festivals before Australian ones, generating buzz through them, but it’s not necessarily going to increase their audience here,” he told Encore.

Being a new festival, one of the great challenges was securing new high-profile Australian films to be part of the line-up, which has not happened this year.