Film festivals are increasingly appearing worldwide. They provide a platform for film practitioners to communicate with each other and play a positive role in generating income, promoting business, and improving the quality of life in the community. In the rapid development of film festivals, clarifying the reasons for establishing film festivals is conducive to the founders of film festivals clarifying their own positioning and promoting the smooth operation of film festivals in the future. This study uses the PRISMA method to conduct a systematic review of the literature from 2003 to 2024. Scopus and WoS were selected as the main literature sources for this study, and 580 relevant articles were retrieved. After manual screening and exclusion by the researchers, 22 articles related to the topic of this study were finally identified. Based on the textual analysis of these articles and assisted by the word cloud generated by Atlas. ti, this study summarizes the seven reasons for the establishment of film festivals: identity recognition, stakeholders, national ideology, promotion of national film industry, promotion of regional economic development, community empowerment, and social change. Clarifying these reasons will help the government and film festival organizers better grasp the focus and direction of the film festival, thereby promoting the success of the film festival they establish.

Keywords: Film festival; reason; systematic literature review; establish; stakeholder

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