Navigating Festival Submissions on a Micro-Budget - How Do You Prioritize?

Hey everyone, I'm Priya Sharma, a colorist, and I've just finished up a short film with a director friend on an absolute shoestring. We're really proud of it, but now we're looking at festival submissions and feeling a bit overwhelmed. I'm seeing figures for submission fees alone ranging from $1,000 to $5,000, and honestly, that's almost as much as our entire post-production budget! We've tried looking for waivers on a few platforms, but it feels like hitting a wall without an existing track record. For those of you who've successfully navigated a festival run with very limited funds, how do you even begin to prioritize which festivals to apply to? Are there specific strategies for finding grants or securing fee waivers without being a 'name' yet?