What is your cause for celebration? The Moet Film Festival wants to know!

The highly-praised Moët & Chandon company has plenty accomplishments to celebrate — but in 2015, the company flipped the script and created the Moët Moment Film Festival, where upcoming filmmakers have a chance to win a grand prize of a $25,000 film grant to go towards their career.

This annual short film competition seeks to discover and give a voice to the next generation of cinematographers.

“For 275 years, Moët & Chandon has been turning the ordinary into the extraordinary with the pop of a cork,” the brands website states. “The world’s most loved champagne, Moët has been sharing the magic of champagne with the world for a quarter of a century. Every glass overflows with the House’s hallmark values of history, generosity, savoir-faire, success, boldness, and elegance—values still at the heart of its global appeal.”

As part of their success, Moët & Chandon invites people to join in on the magic and wants to use their platform to help the next generation visually share what moments matter most.

To participate in the competition, candidates are asked to submit a 30-60 second film that shows how you celebrate what you care about most. It could be a small everyday moment, a special occasion or an issue that you’re passionate about.

“Tell us what your cause for celebration is,” they said.

The competition opened on January 5th but no worries, aspiring filmmakers have until March 22 to submit their video. Get your squad together now, and start filming.

The competition will not only have a grand prize of a $25,000 film grant but also comes packed with opportunities for young creative on the move. If selected by the impressive panel of judges, winners will have the chance to produce digital content for Moët & Chandon in 2018 to be distributed across Moët USA’s social channels.

Last year, winners provided useful insight on the competition, the company and what they feel like is a rare and unique moment for emerging filmmakers to participate in.

“It felt like a really amazing chance for us to just kind of tell a story we are passionate about, and I feel like that’s really rare, that as filmmakers you can have total creative freedom and start from scratch and create something that is entirely your own,” said Jack Welles, who submitted the short film titled Know Yourself.  

Having the opportunity to create for art’s sake is what encouraged Jarred McGriff, who submitted the video, The Now. He said winning was an added bonus, but loved going through the creative process and overcoming challenges.

“I thought it would be an awesome opportunity to get some friends together and just create,” McGriff said. “It became less about the festival and more about making something to make something, and winning the festival on top of that showed my passion that I had for the film, other people saw as well, which is more than I expected.”

You can submit entries, by April 5, by visiting this link.

Good luck!