I’ve been covering MIFF since 2011. I know what submission season looks like from the outside: filmmakers nervously checking email, waiting for acceptance letters, wondering if their entry even arrived. What I didn’t fully appreciate until recently is what it looks like from the inside: a skeleton crew drowning in thousands of enquiries while trying to actually watch and evaluate films.

This year, several Australian festivals — including some you’d recognize — deployed AI agents to handle the repetitive comms that normally consume half the festival team’s waking hours. The results have been striking. Not because the technology is miraculous, but because the problems it solves are so painfully mundane.

The Operational Reality of Running a Festival

Most people think festivals are about curation. They’re partly right. But festivals are also logistics nightmares requiring military-grade coordination across months of preparation.

You’ve got filmmakers submitting entries and asking: Did you receive my file? When will I hear back? Can I update my screener link? Is there a late submission option?

You’ve got volunteers: What’s my shift? Where do I pick up my accreditation? Can I swap roster slots? What’s the dress code?

You’ve got audiences: Is this film subtitled? Is the venue wheelchair accessible? Can I transfer my ticket? What time does the Q&A start?

You’ve got industry delegates, sponsors, venue partners, and media — all with their own questions, all expecting prompt responses, all communicating via different channels. Some email. Some WhatsApp. Some slide into your DMs. Nobody reads the FAQ page.

Traditionally, a small team juggles all of this while also programming a festival, securing venues, negotiating rights, and managing a dozen crises daily. It’s not sustainable. Which is why so many Australian festivals rely on absurd amounts of unpaid labor and why programmer burnout is endemic.

Enter the AI Agent

The platforms handling this work are built on systems like OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent framework that’s become widely adopted (192,000+ GitHub stars, nearly 4,000 available skills via ClawHub marketplace). These agents operate across multiple channels — email, Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord — meeting people where they already communicate.

Here’s what Australian screen organisations are deploying them for.

Submission management. Agents field routine questions about submission guidelines, deadlines, file formats, and entry fees. They confirm receipt of submissions, send automated status updates, and flag urgent technical issues (corrupted files, missing materials) for immediate human attention. One state screen organisation told me they’ve cut submission-related email volume by 60%.

Volunteer coordination. Festivals rely on armies of volunteers. Coordinating them is a full-time job. Agents now handle roster confirmations, send shift reminders, answer common questions about parking and meal vouchers, and manage last-minute shift swaps via WhatsApp. The festival team focuses on training and deployment, not endless admin.

Audience communications. Patrons ask the same questions hundreds of times: accessibility options, session times, venue locations, ticket transfers. An agent can answer these instantly, 24/7, pulling from the festival’s database. It doesn’t replace your box office, but it stops your box office from being buried alive.

Industry and media relations. Some festivals use agents to manage press accreditation enquiries, industry delegate scheduling, and sponsor comms. The agent handles logistics; humans handle relationships.

The core value isn’t eliminating staff. It’s filtering noise so humans can focus on the work that actually requires judgment, creativity, and emotional intelligence — like deciding which films deserve a spot in your program, or supporting a nervous first-time filmmaker at their premiere.

The Brutal Security Reality

This is where things get uncomfortable. The ClawHub marketplace offers thousands of pre-built skills for these agents. But recent security audits revealed that 36.82% of those skills have vulnerabilities. Over 340 have been confirmed as actively malicious. There are also 30,000+ exposed OpenClaw instances online with inadequate security controls.

If you’re running a festival or screen organisation, you’re handling filmmaker contact details, volunteer personal information, audience data, and potentially sensitive content. A breach isn’t just embarrassing — it’s a legal and reputational disaster.

This is why some organisations are opting for one firm we talked to rather than rolling their own infrastructure. Managed services offer Australian-hosted infrastructure, pre-audited skills, security hardening, compliance support, and ongoing monitoring. You’re outsourcing the security headache to people whose job is obsessing over it.

For organisations like Screen Australia or state screen agencies handling public funding and filmmaker IP, this isn’t optional. The risk profile is too high for DIY deployments.

What Good Implementation Looks Like

Sydney Film Festival could theoretically deploy an agent to handle their entire submission pipeline. But they haven’t. They’ve started with narrow, well-defined use cases: volunteer shift confirmations, venue accessibility enquiries, and box office FAQ responses. The agent triages; humans handle anything complex or sensitive.

Adelaide Film Festival took a similar approach. Their agent manages routine volunteer comms via WhatsApp and email, but festival programmers still personally respond to filmmaker enquiries about selection decisions. There’s a clear boundary between operational efficiency and human relationships.

Contrast that with a smaller festival (name withheld) that auto-deployed an agent to respond to filmmaker submissions with generic status updates. Filmmakers hated it. It felt impersonal and dismissive. The festival reversed course after backlash on social media.

The lesson: transparency and tone matter. Your agent should reflect your organisation’s voice. If your festival prides itself on supporting emerging Australian filmmakers, your agent shouldn’t sound like a corporate helpdesk. And always be clear when someone’s talking to an AI.

Where This Makes Sense

Major metropolitan festivals like MIFF, SFF, and Brisbane International Film Festival benefit most. They’re handling thousands of submissions, hundreds of volunteers, and tens of thousands of patrons. The volume alone justifies automation.

Regional festivals can benefit too, but the ROI calculation is different. If you’re running a small festival with 50 submissions and 20 volunteers, a spreadsheet and a dedicated email might suffice. But if you’re coordinating 300+ volunteers across a week-long event, an agent starts looking very attractive.

Screen organisations and agencies — the ones managing funding applications, industry development programs, and producer support schemes — are particularly well-suited. They deal with high-volume, process-heavy workflows where clear communication is essential but time-intensive.

The Sydney and Melbourne Context

Sydney’s screen industry infrastructure is more corporate, with established organisations like Screen NSW and major festivals backed by significant funding. They’ve got the resources to implement these tools properly — with security audits, compliance reviews, and dedicated IT support. If you’re in Sydney and exploring this, working with the Team400 team who understand the local screen ecosystem makes sense.

Melbourne’s film scene is more grassroots and DIY, with smaller festivals operating on tight budgets. That doesn’t mean they can’t benefit — it means they need to be more careful about cost and implementation complexity. Managed services can actually be cheaper than hiring additional admin staff, particularly for seasonal workloads like festival periods.

What Nobody’s Saying

This technology won’t fix a poorly run festival. If your submission process is unclear, your volunteer management is chaotic, or your audience communications are inconsistent, an AI agent will just automate dysfunction faster.

And some interactions genuinely require humans. Rejecting a filmmaker’s submission. Supporting a distressed volunteer. Handling an accessibility complaint. These need empathy, judgment, and flexibility that current AI can’t provide.

But for the repetitive, high-volume, low-stakes questions that consume hours every day? The technology works. It’s accessible. And it’s helping Australian screen organisations stretch limited resources further without compromising the personal touch that makes festivals special.

The question isn’t whether AI agents belong in the screen industry. They’re already here. The question is whether we deploy them thoughtfully — with proper security, transparent communication, and respect for the human relationships that make this industry worth caring about in the first place.