CarliTeio

For context I'm in an MA now and starting my PhD in the Fall.
Have you done a Masters in film studies? If not, I would recommend trying to apply to (what few there are) funded MAs. I think USC offers some students partial funding and some full and maybe UW and Toronto ? Anyone know of others? 
You will hear a lot of people warn of humanities PhDs not being worth it or that the job market is abysmal. My #1 advice is to arrive at a personal decision about what matters to you. I realized that while all those warnings are sound, none of those people could actually offer me or point me to an alternative that would make me happier. All of the constituent parts of doing a degree are things I love: reading, writing, exploring new topics just for the sake of it, being in dialogue with peers and faculty, etc. There are of course things I don't and won't like, but I've also worked a desk job and know that this path is really better for me for now. Yes, the job market is horrible, but knowing that I have years of funding and license to study what I love for 5+ years feels like a really huge and amazing win for me right now. Some corners of academia are really distorted and toxic, for sure. But so are so many workplaces. We don't even know what world we will have in 5 years, and I'm just really happy to take it one step at a time. 
So, all this is to say, you need to make peace with the question of why you want to do a PhD. What do you want to get from the experience? If you fall more in the area of wanting the experience in and of itself, I would encourage you to keep researching and searching for the places that you think would be able to offer that. If you fall more in the area of wanting some kind of outcome, I would probably not pursue a PhD.
If you are struggling to get in touch with current students, try reaching out to the department coordinator and saying that you are a prospective student hoping to have an informal chat with someone in the program. They may be able to help connect you with someone more easily than just cold outreach to someone on the webpage.
I hope some of this is helpful to you!

Hi everyone! Thanks for making this thread!
I'm an international student and I'm def applying for some phd programs this fall (the ones I'm 100% interested in are NYU, Toronto and UAL)!
Good luck to all of us, I guess ahaha
What about Comparative Literature? From what I've gathered online, that's a sort of union of literature and cinema :) if English was my first language (or my country had better opportunities...) I'd def go for it!

Hello everyone! It's likely that I'll be applying to a few film studies programs too - I haven't quite decided yet as I have a bit of background in both literatures and films, so I might apply to both. Is this not a good strategy?

It's a little early in the game, but I thought I'd start a thread for those of us applying to programs in cinema, film, and media studies later this year.
Personally, I'm just about to complete my master's here in the UK—but I'm still narrowing down which US PhD programs I'd most like to apply to. What programs are you most interested in?