Never Miss a Film Festival Deadline: Build Alerts with Festival API

Festival deadlines have a habit of becoming urgent at the worst possible time. A filmmaker finds a strong match, saves the festival in a spreadsheet, and returns a week later to discover that the regular deadline passed yesterday. Festival API's new GET /v1/deadlines/closing-soon/ endpoint is built for this exact problem. It returns festivals whose earliest upcoming submission deadline falls within a chosen window, so you can turn a recurring API call into practical festival deadline alerts for email, Slack, Discord, Zapier, n8n, or an AI submission agent.

The endpoint does the deadline selection for you. Instead of downloading a broad list and comparing every date in your own code, you ask for the next seven, 30, or 90 days. Each result includes the festival name and location, categories, direct submission_url, nearest_deadline, deadline stage, and days_remaining. One call costs 2 credits.

Why a purpose-built deadline endpoint matters

A useful alert needs to answer a small set of questions quickly: which festival needs attention, how much time is left, what kind of deadline is approaching, and where can the filmmaker submit? The closing-soon response keeps those fields together.

• festival_id and festival name identify the opportunity.
• City, state, and country provide geographic context.
• Categories let you keep alerts relevant to the project.
• nearest_deadline and days_remaining make urgency easy to sort.
• The endpoint returns the primary upcoming submission deadline for each festival.
• submission_url gives the recipient a direct next action.

The endpoint returns the earliest upcoming submission deadline for each festival, rather than every deadline attached to that record. That makes it a good fit for notifications. A daily digest does not need a history lesson. It needs the next date that can still be acted on.

Request festivals closing in the next seven days

The days parameter defaults to 30 and accepts values up to 90. You can narrow the response with category and country. This request finds short film opportunities with an upcoming deadline in the next week:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  "https://festivalapi.com/v1/deadlines/closing-soon/?days=7&category=short_film"

Add &country=US when the workflow is only tracking festivals in the United States. A country filter is especially useful when travel, premiere rules, or regional eligibility affect the submission plan.

The same resource is available through RapidAPI at /v1/rapidapi/deadlines/closing-soon/. The Festival API Python and Node SDKs expose it as deadlines_closing_soon(), so an existing application can add alerting without hand-building the HTTP request.

Post the results to Slack or Discord

A webhook is the shortest path from API response to team alert. Poll the endpoint once each morning, skip an empty result, format each festival into one readable line, and send the message to a Slack or Discord incoming webhook. The example below uses Node.js and the standard fetch function:

const apiUrl = new URL(
  "https://festivalapi.com/v1/deadlines/closing-soon/"
);
apiUrl.searchParams.set("days", "7");
apiUrl.searchParams.set("category", "short_film");

const response = await fetch(apiUrl, {
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.FESTIVAL_API_KEY}` }
});

if (!response.ok) {
  throw new Error(`Festival API returned ${response.status}`);
}

const payload = await response.json();
const festivals = payload.results ?? payload;

if (festivals.length === 0) process.exit(0);

const lines = festivals.map((festival) =>
  `• ${festival.festival_name}: ${festival.days_remaining} days ` +
  `${festival.submission_url}`
);

await fetch(process.env.SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL, {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    text: `Short film deadlines closing this week:\n\n${lines.join("\n\n")}`
  })
});

Discord webhooks accept a similar JSON request with a content field instead of Slack's text field. Keep the message focused. Festival name, remaining days, deadline stage, and submission link are enough for a useful first alert. Location or category can be added when several projects share the same channel.

Schedule this script with a daily cron job, a serverless scheduler, GitHub Actions, or the automation tool your team already uses. Polling once per day is usually frequent enough for a seven-day window. Store the last alert date for each festival if you want to avoid sending the same result every morning.

Build the workflow in n8n

n8n can run the entire workflow without a separate application. A basic version uses four nodes:

1. Add a Schedule Trigger and run it every weekday morning.
2. Add an HTTP Request node for GET https://festivalapi.com/v1/deadlines/closing-soon/?days=7&category=short_film. Put the API key in n8n credentials or an environment variable, not directly in the workflow.
3. Use an IF node to continue only when the response contains results. An Item Lists or Code node can sort them by days_remaining and build the message.
4. Send the digest through the Slack, Discord, or email node. Include submission_url so the alert leads directly to the submission page.

For duplicate control, save a key such as festival_id:nearest_deadline in a data store. Notify again only when the key is new or when the remaining time crosses a threshold, such as seven days, three days, or one day. Festival API also has a community n8n integration page for teams that want to connect festival data to broader n8n workflows.

Automate festival deadlines with Zapier

Festival API has a public Zapier app, and deadline alerts also work with Zapier's Schedule and Webhooks tools. Set a daily Schedule trigger, use a Webhooks GET step to call the closing-soon endpoint, and pass the returned records into Slack, Discord, Gmail, or another notification app.

A practical Zap can follow this sequence:

1. Schedule by Zapier runs every morning.
2. Webhooks by Zapier requests ?days=7&category=short_film with the API authorization header.
3. Filter by Zapier stops the run when there are no festivals.
4. Formatter or a Code step turns the results into a compact digest.
5. Slack, Discord, or email delivers the alert to the person managing submissions.

If the recipient needs one task per festival rather than a digest, use Looping by Zapier and create an item in Airtable, Notion, Trello, or a project tracker. The festival_id and nearest_deadline together make a useful deduplication key.

Choose alert windows that match the work

Seven days is useful for final reminders, but it should not be the only window in a serious submission workflow. Preparing a screener, captions, artwork, credits, and payment approval can take longer than expected. Different windows can drive different actions:

• 30 days: add the festival to the review queue and confirm project fit.
• 14 days: assign materials, budget, and eligibility checks.
• 7 days: send the operational alert to the submission channel.
• 3 days: escalate unfinished submissions to the producer or filmmaker.

The endpoint supports any window up to 90 days, so these can be separate scheduled calls or one broader call followed by local rules. Use the primary deadline, days remaining, and standard fee to make the alert actionable, then verify the current details on the festival website.

Use it as a tool for AI submission agents

An AI submission agent should not search the entire festival catalog on every run. Give it a small, current candidate set. The closing-soon endpoint can supply that set, while your own system stores project constraints such as genre, budget, premiere status, runtime, and target countries.

The agent can review the returned festivals, compare them with those constraints, and produce a ranked action list. It can draft a daily summary, flag missing materials, or create a task for human approval. The direct submission link lets the workflow hand off cleanly, but the final eligibility check and submission decision should remain visible to a person. Deadline automation is most useful when it reduces clerical work without hiding the decision.

Start sending festival deadline alerts

The new closing-soon endpoint turns a common spreadsheet problem into one focused API request. Use days=7 for a weekly urgency feed, add category and country filters where they improve relevance, and route the results to the channel your team already watches.

Create a Festival API account and get an API key, then use the Festival API documentation to add /v1/deadlines/closing-soon/ to your application or automation. You can also review the Zapier integration and n8n integration for more ways to connect festival data to existing workflows.