Festivals time limits

[Albert Noble]

Like many here I enter films for many festivals.
I think that I am right in saying that all of them
set a time limit as to when a film was made.
Mostly a film has to be made recently, within the last 2 years, or less !

As far as I can see, and I may have missed it in the rules, there is only one festival exception to this rule and that is the BIAFF competition.
Am I correct in this and if so, I wonder why no time limit ?

[Dave Watterson]

Why should there be?

Who cares when a film was made, so long as it does its job?

[Michael Slowe]

Dave, I'm not so sure that there would be no objection to a film made, say, fifty years ago, especially if it had a wide circulation and even been entered in a previous long ago IAC competition.

[fraught]

The reason why a lot of festivals have the time limit on them, is purely down to wanting to be more current. Most festival want to have that premiere or that UK/European/World exclusive in the hope that it gets more bums on seats.
BIAFF isn't the only fest that doesn't apply this restriction, thankfully, but all the fests that aim to be more commercially viable will restrict how old the films submitted are to hopefully make more money.