Ok. So you finished your movie. Now what? The game begins.
You spent two years of your life, spent thousands of dollars of your and other people's money, and you're bombarded with choices. Most of them begin with "Call for Entries". Numerous festivals attempt to draw you in with their fancy, cluttered, confusing web sites, babble about who will be there, and what a great time it is. So you think, "Hmm, I'll spend a half hour finding the form and submission fee, another half hour filling it out then pay the fee, in the hopes that some company will take my film, pay me, and jump start my career". You try it once, twice, three times...forty times, at $40 to $100 a pop, only to be accepted to about five. What next? You travel to these five festivals, only to find out that they're held in some art gallery, or beat up movie house with a sticky floor, being watched by about ten patrons. Then you spend another year trying to navigate the distribution/distributor maze, spending cash the whole time with the promotion/ solicitation/ acquisition process. Now, you're three years in, and between submission fees, postage, product cost, press kits, phone bills and travel, you've spent another $2,000 and you have nothing to show for it. Nothing.
Most festivals simply take your fee, pocket it, and probably never even watch your piece of work. They might, but you have no proof. The same (minus the fee) goes for distributor acquisition people and reviewers.
Maybe you are one of the fortunate few, who win the indie film lottery and find success through this path. Most films and filmmakers do not. That's where we come in.