The 2027 Las Vegas Film Festival, January 14–21 at Brenden Theatres, opens submissions for features, shorts, documentaries, TV, video podcasts & vertical media.

Las Vegas, Nevada

The Las Vegas Film Festival announced today that submissions for its 2027 festival will officially open Friday, August 28, inviting filmmakers and independent creators from the United States and around the world to submit their work for consideration.

The 2027 Las Vegas Film Festival will take place January 14–21, 2027, at Brenden Theatres at the Palms Casino Resort as the Festival’s official host venue. Across eight days, the Festival will present a curated program of independent, contemporary, and international cinema screenings alongside filmmaker appearances, industry programming, competitive awards, and special events around Las Vegas.

A Multi-Format Call for Entries

Submissions will be accepted across a broad range of narrative and nonfiction storytelling. In a move reflecting the rapidly shifting media landscape, categories include U.S. and international feature films, documentary features, short films, animation, student films, television and web series, music videos, video podcasts, vertical narratives, and digital-first work.

“Great storytelling is no longer defined by a single format or screen,” said Tom Ingram, Festival Director of the Las Vegas Film Festival. “We want the Las Vegas Film Festival to be a place where an independent feature filmmaker, a documentary director, a short filmmaker, or an emerging digital creator can bring exceptional work and have it taken seriously.”

$100,000+ Grand Prize Distribution Packages and Cash Awards

To offer immediate, tangible opportunities for independent creators, the 2027 Festival will present jury, audience, and regional awards across its competition programs. More than $10,000 in cash prizes will be awarded across selected categories.

Additionally, the festival is introducing four Grand Prize Distribution Awards valued at up to $25,000 each, providing winning creators with guaranteed theatrical exhibition and distribution opportunities. Grand prize structures include theatrical distribution packages for narrative and documentary features, a theatrical showcase for award-winning short films, and a dedicated showcase for selected video podcasts.

Through the Festival’s official partnership with streaming platform IVOX+, along with other streaming and theatrical distribution partnerships, Official Selections will also be considered for worldwide digital exhibition and expanded distribution following the event.

“Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the world, so we want this festival to mean something real to filmmakers,” said Louie Comella, Executive Director of the Las Vegas Film Festival. “The traditional festival circuit too often doesn’t lead to commercial distribution anymore. We want to provide more than just a screening, a trophy, and a PDF laurel. By connecting the event directly to theatrical exhibition and streaming, we are bridging the gap between independent film and actual audience reach.”

How to Submit

Submissions for the 2027 Las Vegas Film Festival open Friday, August 28, 2026. Filmmakers, podcasters, and digital creators can submit projects directly through FilmFreeway and Festhome.

The Festival will announce its first wave of Official Selections and programming schedules in the months leading up to January. Tickets and Festival passes for the 2027 Las Vegas Film Festival will go on sale on September 15, 2026.

About the Las Vegas Film Festival

The Las Vegas Film Festival is an international cinema event from the entertainment capital of the world. The Festival showcases independent, contemporary, and international cinema, bringing together filmmakers, audiences, and industry professionals through screenings, premieres, filmmaker appearances, panel discussions, special events, and awards. The 2027 Las Vegas Film Festival takes place January 14–21, 2027, at Brenden Theatres at the Palms Casino Resort and venues throughout Las Vegas.

www.LasVegasFilmFestival.com

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Louie Comella – Executive Director
Las Vegas Film Festival
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Website: www.lasvegasfilmfestival.com

Professor Joe Nikolson is preparing a Spain-focused investor education and market research initiative examining how smart trading technologies are applied across modern capital markets. The program will cover quantitative analysis, market data, algorithm-assisted decision-making, trading execution and risk management, while helping participants better understand the differences between traditional, quantitative and data-driven trading approaches.

Madrid, Spain

Professor Joe Nikolson, CEO and Chief Compliance Officer of Securitize Markets, is preparing to introduce an investor education and market research initiative focused on Spain, with the program designed to provide market participants with a more structured understanding of smart trading technologies and their application across international capital markets.

The proposed initiative will examine how data analysis, quantitative models, algorithm-assisted decision-making and systematic execution are used to interpret market information. Educational content will also address the role of pricing data, trading volume, volatility and other market indicators in the development and assessment of trading strategies.

A central part of the program will focus on how quantitative and smart trading models generate signals and how predefined rules may be used to establish entry and exit conditions. Participants will also be introduced to methods for evaluating market changes, adjusting risk exposure and reviewing the assumptions behind different trading models.

Rather than presenting technology as a replacement for independent investment judgment, the initiative is intended to help participants understand how analytical tools can support more structured research and decision-making. The program will emphasize the importance of evaluating data quality, model design, market conditions and execution constraints before applying any technology-driven approach.

The educational framework will also compare traditional trading, quantitative trading and smart trading. Traditional approaches often depend more heavily on manual research and individual judgment, while quantitative and smart trading may combine statistical analysis, algorithms and automated technologies to process larger volumes of market information.

Risk education will form an important component of the initiative. Participants will be introduced to market volatility risk, model risk, liquidity risk, execution risk, technology risk, foreign-exchange exposure, transaction costs and the possibility of capital loss. The program will also stress that historical data and model performance cannot reliably predict future results, and that a strategy that performed well under previous market conditions may not remain effective in a different environment.

Professor Joe Nikolson brings more than 25 years of experience in capital markets, electronic trading and market structure, with a professional background spanning regulated financial markets and digital-asset infrastructure.

As part of the initiative, Securitize Markets is expected to provide research and educational content covering smart trading, quantitative analysis, market-data research, risk management and the role of technology in modern capital markets.

Further information regarding eligibility, participation procedures and applicable compliance requirements is expected to be released through official channels. Any participation will remain subject to investor suitability assessments, service availability and applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

About Securitize Markets
Securitize Markets operates within the digital-assets and regulated financial-markets sector, with activities related to compliant digital securities and market infrastructure. According to the materials provided for this announcement, Securitize serves as a regulated trading platform focused on supporting the development of compliant secondary-market activity for tokenized assets. Its work includes market operations, institutional engagement, regulatory implementation and research related to modern capital-market technologies. For the proposed Spain-focused initiative, Securitize Markets is expected to contribute research and educational material covering quantitative analysis, smart trading, market data, technology applications and risk-management concepts.

The transaction marks the change of control to the company's longest-standing institutional backer, and clears the way for HappyOrNot's move from customer feedback into real-time operational intelligence.

NEW YORK, USA

FE International, Inc., the global market leader in technology mergers and acquisitions, advised HappyOrNot, the Finnish company behind the Smiley feedback terminals, and separately advised the Company’s selling shareholders, including existing investors; Verdane, Northzone and AirTree Ventures, and members of the Company’s management team and employee shareholders, on the sale of their respective holdings to Verdane, the European specialist growth buyout firm. Verdane, an existing minority investor since 2019, has increased its position to a majority stake in the business.

HappyOrNot started with a bad afternoon in an electronics shop. Heikki Väänänen was a teenager, got poor service, and found there was no way to tell anyone about it. Two decades later he and Ville Levaniemi founded the company in Tampere, Finland, in 2009, around a device with four buttons and four faces. They started with two buttons. Customers told them four worked better. A Finnish supermarket group signed first, Heathrow Airport followed, and the terminal went on to become one of the most recognised customer feedback solutions across retail and other customer-facing environments.

The business that sold in 2026 is not the hardware company it began as. Smiley Terminal™, Smiley Touch™, Smiley Digital™ and Smiley Sign™ create a continuous stream of in-the-moment operational data, turning customer experience into signals that can be analysed, activated and integrated into the systems and workflows organisations use to run their operations. More than 4,000 brands across 135 countries run on it, including Amazon, Sodexo , Heathrow Airport and Aramark. Over two billion feedback responses have been collected in the moment and at the point of experience, rather than through traditional retrospective surveys.

Fifteen years also produces a complicated shareholder register. HappyOrNot raised across several rounds, including a $14.5 million Series A in 2017 backed by Northzone and AirTree Ventures, and a $25 million growth round led by Verdane in 2019.

FE International ran the process on behalf of the Company and its selling shareholders, resulting in a simplified ownership structure with Verdane, already a shareholder since 2019, now a controlling majority owner alongside the company’s management team going forward.

“HappyOrNot is a rare asset. It is a category-defining business with a physical footprint no pure software company can replicate, sitting on a proprietary dataset that gets more valuable every year two billion responses collected at the point of service is not something a competitor can buy or scrape. Running a process for the Company and coordinating multiple selling shareholders with an existing investor moving to control is not trivial, and it’s why we structured separate advisory workstreams for each party to get to one clean signing,” said Max Alderman, Partner at FE International.

HappyOrNot owns one of the largest datasets of its kind and gathers it in places that are difficult to reach any other way, including airport terminals, supermarket exits, hospital corridors and bank branches. Erling Amble, board member at HappyOrNot and investor at Verdane, has described the same shift, pointing to demand moving away from retrospective online feedback and towards real-time data embedded directly in operational systems.

The transaction landed alongside a change at the top. Tim Waterton, Chief Revenue Officer since 2021, stepped up to Chief Executive Officer, and Carl Holmquist took over as Chairman. Waterton has spent more than 30 years in enterprise software, including a business he co-founded that was later acquired by BMC Software, plus senior roles at M-Files and RainStor and earlier positions at the London Stock Exchange and Accenture. His plan is to push HappyOrNot beyond measurement and into real-time operational intelligence, closing the last mile of customer experience by turning continuous microfeedback into activated data, integrated directly into the operational flow of organisations so frontline teams can act while there is still time to make a difference.

About HappyOrNot

HappyOrNot is a Finnish customer experience and operational intelligence technology company founded in 2009 by Heikki Väänänen and Ville Levaniemi. Headquartered in Tampere with a US office and a global reseller network, it captures in-the-moment microfeedback through its Smiley touchpoints and turns those signals into real-time operational intelligence, helping organisations understand performance, identify issues and improve customer experiences. HappyOrNot works with more than 4,000 organisations across 135 countries in retail, healthcare, transport, hospitality and public services.

About Verdane

Verdane is a specialist growth buyout investment firm backing tech-enabled and sustainable businesses across Europe. Verdane funds have raised €10 billion and made more than 200 investments since 2003, with over 180 investment professionals and operating experts across Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Helsinki, Munich, Oslo and Stockholm. Verdane is a certified B Corporation and invests as a majority or minority holder, in single companies or in portfolios.

About FE International

Founded in 2010, FE International is an award-winning strategic advisor for technology businesses. FE’s team has completed over 1,500 transactions with a combined value of over $50 billion. FE International was named one of The Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies from 2020 to 2024 by the Financial Times and is also a seven-time Inc. 5000 company.

For more information, visit www.feinternational.com.

Media Contact Details
Gaj Tanwar
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