The very first festival to accept Stro: The Michael D’Asaro Story was the Warsaw International Film Festival. They sent me the acceptance letter back in May. At first I thought I the organizers had made a mistake. I sent increasingly frantic emails to them saying I accept to no response. This happened at the same time another festival did exactly that. They accepted me and then rescinded it. I feared Warsaw had done the same thing.

But no. Eventually, I made contact with the organizers and we’ve been going through all the details to get the film screened live before audiences, What was amazing about the acceptance and why I was unsure of the acceptance was that they sent me my acceptance three and a half months before the notification deadline. They must really like Stro: The Michael D’Asaro. They did however say I couldn’t tell anyone until they had made their announcements. I’ve been sitting on this news all summer. It’s killed me not to be able to tell people.

As part of the festival, I am allowed to enter their film market which is the second part of the festival. The film is listed on Cinando. Hopefully, by being in the market and appearing in the festival, I can see some sales inquiries for the film. There will be a press conference on Sept 23 where the Warsaw IFF will announce who has been selected for the festival. I hope I can get the video from that to share.

The biggest disappointment I have about the festival is i will be unable to attend. I hoped progress could have been made in alleviating the pandemic by this point, but no. I checked on the US State Departments website and US citizens are still not allowed to travel to Poland. At least the posters I made for the film will be in attendance.

But that is not all in festival news. At this point, Stro: The Michael D’Asaro story has been accepted into 5 festivals. I am still waiting on word from approximately. What can I say, I wanted to make sure I got into some festivals for this film.

The first festival was the Burbank IFF which was streamed on Sept 13, 2020. I was nervous all day since it was the World Premiere. I should have done a blog post with that announcement but I was holding off until I could talk about Warsaw.

The festival went well. I did get to see the award show. Stro: The Michael D’Asaro Story did not win but at least I heard Martin Kove and his son announce the name of the film. Martin Kove played Kyle Reese, sensei of Cobra Kai in the karate kid movies.

The next film festival for the movie will be the Boston Film Festival. The festival runs from Sep 24 – 27, which as of this writing is only a week or so away. They haven’t scheduled the exact times for the screening yet, but I will certainly flood the social media landscape when I find out.

Also for the festival, Doug, Michael Tarascio and I will be recording an interview to be shown alongside the film. If that is available to be shown outside the festival, I will of course show it far and wide.

The Warsaw IFF runs from Oct 9-18. If you are one of those lucky people who can attend, please take pictures of the poster and tell me how the film was received.

Next up is the Orlando Film Festival. This runs from October 15-22. The festival organizers are still putting their schedule together so I don’t have a lot of information from them yet. Although, I did get a letter with a list of about a fifty films that hadn’t been uploaded to the festival site yet. Uploading the film was the first thing I did when I received the letter telling me what I needed to do to be in the festival. I can’t imagine why people still wouldn’t have done that at this point.

The final festival, for the moment, where Stro: The Michael D’Asaro Story will stream, will be the Ojai Film Festival. The film will be part of the Gold Coast Series. That will take place on November 9th. The festival organizers have also requested that Doug and I do an interview for the film. I don’t have a time for the interview currently.

I still hope to be accepted into more festivals. The more people who see the film the better is what I think.

If you’d like to read about the making of Stro: The Michael D’Asaro Story, I did a print interview with Kung Fu Magazine. The article was written by Gene Ching who also appears in the movie. Full disclosure: I’ve been friends with Gene since the 20th century. The article does have a few tidbits that might be of interest. You can find the article online here: http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1557

Burbank Film Festival Sept 13

Boston Film Festival Sept 24-27 Tickets are available here: https://watch.eventive.org/bostonfilmfestival2020/play/5f64a5ceee0c65004cf9a0f4

Warsaw International Film Festival Oct 9-18

Orlando Flim Festival Oct 15-22

Ojai Film Festival Nov 9