Kinolime's Frame by Frame Shorts Competition Enters Its Judges Round
Summary
Community voting closed yesterday on the Top 10, and an industry judging panel now spends three weeks narrowing the field to finalists, with the studio's community casting the final vote in late October
Kinolime's 2026 Frame by Frame Shorts Competition has entered its judges round, according to the platform's own competition page. More than 2,500 submitted screenplays were narrowed by Kinolime's team to a field of 26, which the Kinolime community then voted down to a Top 10 ahead of an October 4 voting deadline. An industry judging panel now reviews those 10 scripts from October 5 through October 25, selecting three finalists; the Kinolime community casts the deciding vote for the winning screenplay starting October 26. Kinolime is a community-driven indie studio where members vote on which submitted scripts the company produces. Its track record includes DUE, a 2026 feature greenlit with up to $15 million in financing through the same model. Entrants who reach the Top 10 remain in the competition through final winner selection unless they formally withdraw; only the eventual winner is committed to complete production using the competition's grant funding and to provide ongoing project updates.
The Kinolime Lens
A 2,500-to-3 funnel, with the community voting at both the top and bottom of that funnel and an industry panel deciding the middle, is a genuinely different selection model than a standard screenplay competition, where a single judging body controls the result from submission to winner. For writers watching the next three weeks, the judges round is the stage where craft and industry judgment narrow the field; the return to community voting for the final decision means a script that impresses working professionals still has to connect with an audience to actually win, which is a different bar than most competitions set.