More than 5,000 film festivals take place globally and many of these have only been established in the last two decades. International Film Festivals collects the leading scholarship on this increasingly prominent phenomenon from both historical and contemporary perspectives, using diverse methods including archival research, interviews and surveys and drawing widely from fields like sociology, urban studies and film criticism to patent technology and history. With contributors from across the world and covering the major festivals — Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Berlin — as well as niche, genre and online film festivals, this book is an authoritative and exemplary guide to the evolution of these key sites for film distribution, exhibition and reception. Chapters unravel topics such as the relationship between corporations and festivals, the soft power function they can perform for their host nations and the changing identities of audiences on arrival at, and during exploration of, a given festival venue. Tricia Jenkins' edited volume reconceives the film festival for the global, digital age whilst drawing out its historic importance and ultimately makes a major intervention in film festival studies as well as film and cultural studies more widely.