CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – With the good news of the 38th annual Virginia Film Festival being on pace for a record year, that also renders one seeking tickets at the Virginia Film Festival website more apt to find sell-outs. Opening night Springsteen was sold out, but some tickets became available Wednesday afternoon. The Culbreth Theater Pep Banned screening has been sold out since the October 3 first day of sales date and was still Wednesday afternoon.

VAFF Artistic Director Ilya Tovbis told CvilleRightNow just because you find a show sold-out on the site, it does not mean you’re out-of-luck.

As shown in the Springsteen movie example, Tovbis said keep checking the website, “People claim tickets, they buy tickets, then they realize there’s something else on, or they have a ticket somehow and they cannot attend, and they’re return those tickets.”

Tovbis said, “The minute they do, we’ll release them back out to the public.”

The second option is the day of screening, show up at the theater.

“What I strongly recommend people do is try out our standby lines,” Tovbis said.

“The way those work is at whatever theater your screening is meant to be, starting an hour before that screening people are welcome to line up. There will be signage of where to do so in our standby lines.”

“The way that works is a few minutes before the start of the screening, our operations team, our house managers, take a look at how many available seats there still are and begin to resell them because if you’re a ticketholder, you’ll need to be there 15 minutes prior in order to guarantee your spot.”

He says invariably, people get sick, are unable to come, get caught up in traffic, they decide they’ve got something else, and rather than have those tickets go to waste, we would like to ride them back out to the public,” Tovbis said.

Tovbis acknowledges the standby lines are a bit of a gamble because there’s no guarantee of getting in, “But based on the last few years of doing this, the vast majority of people who’ve waited in these lines have gotten in.”

“There’s enough melt between students and others who just aren’t able to come that there tend to be openings at the last moment.”