Kristen Stewart’s Directorial Debut Is Fueled by a Small Distributor

When Kristen Stewart’s acclaimed feature directorial debut, “The Chronology of Water,” was acquired for home distribution by the Forge a few months after its Cannes premiere in May, one query crossed the minds of many people in the trade: What the hell is the Forge?

“After COVID started, it gave me an opportunity to think, as a film producer, about what sales entity I would want to work with, to have a vehicle to release films that we were intending to produce,” says founder Mark Mathias Sayre. “We had some early success, and a couple of contemporaries asked if we would handle their sales or distribution. Fast forward a couple years, and now it’s all we’re doing.”

As a flood of content has crowded the market, so has an avalanche of new boutique distributors seeking to release it, often prioritizing what their filmmakers need or focusing on particular audiences. In the past 12 months or two, corporations like 1-2 Special, Cartuna x Dweck, the Future of Film Is Female, Joint Venture, Muscle Distribution, Suncatcher Prods., Watermelon Pictures, Willa and more have begun putting low-budget indies in theaters. It’s been taking place on a bigger scale as effectively: since launching in 2023, AMC Theatres Distribution has turned to home distribution consultants Variance Films to get the lay of the land. Its operation has had big successes with live performance docs like “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” and other event shows.

But having more choices doesn’t essentially make a producer’s path simpler. “The biggest thing you need is patience, and you have to find your niche,” says Mabel Tam, senior VP of movie and head programmer at Landmark Theatres. “There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach anymore.” She cites the Jewish/Catholic interfaith comedy “Bad Shabbos” as one instance. “They released it in Florida first, before they even hit New York or L.A., and then targeted where they wanted to go. You have to be nimble and patient and watch your release calendar, making sure you’re not competing with anything too big.”

What would possibly beat discovering a area of interest viewers in your movie? A distributor that has a area of interest viewers for its whole slate. Watermelon Pictures, a department of Chicago-based MPI Media Group, focuses on Palestinian cinema and associated topics. Since it was based in 2024 by brothers Badie and Hamza Ali with inventive director Alana Hadid (sister of fashions Gigi and Bella Hadid), it’s distributed round a dozen movies and launched the Watermelon+ streaming service. Its potential to achieve underserved audiences is just like the method Angel Studios has discovered success with viewers looking for family-friendly and faith-based content.

Suncatcher Prods., which just lately dealt with theatrical distribution for the Armenian documentary “There Was, There Was Not,” with Watermelon dealing with ancillary, is a label specializing in the theatrical release of movies about women, people with disabilities and the surroundings. Amazon and Focus Features vet Annalisa Shoemaker based the company in 2023 as a for-hire theatrical distribution outfit. It obtained off to an auspicious start with Oscar nominee “To Kill a Tiger,” taking the movie from its awards-qualifying run to more than 40 arthouse cinemas. Shoemaker just lately departed from her doc-heavy lineup, working with AMC Theatres to guide the rom-com “Good Bad Things” and setting it up for a Hulu streaming deal. “One of our goals at Suncatcher is building community, working backwards from the audience to learn what they want and how to bring them together,” she says.

On its floor, the Future of Film Is Female’s agenda appears fairly direct: create gender parity in the movie trade by supporting the productions, exhibition and promotion of women who’re first-time filmmakers. “What I’ve seen, leading out of the festivals, is that there’s not a lot of [gender] parity in what kind of films get picked up afterwards,” says programmer and FOFIF founder Caryn Coleman, who launched her practically eight-year-old org’s distribution arm a 12 months in the past. “One of the reasons I wanted to do this is because there are more of these films than I could possibly handle.” But her mannequin is one thing that may have far more widespread functions: utilizing a nonprofit org to fund all of it. “That’s not to say that we don’t try to recoup the money we put into it, but as a nonprofit, we try and do that via different means.”

The manufacturing/distribution outfit Willa “focuses on socially and culturally important films,” says founder Elizabeth Woodward. Willa’s spectacular lineup of movies contains Claire Denis’ “The Fence” and Spirit Awards nominee “La Cocina.” “Sundance Institute is really engaged in the future of distribution, so they invited me to be part of their fellowship,” she says. “That’s where I really formalized Willa’s business model, with some great mentors.”

While most of these new distribs lean in direction of more critical fare, there are a few notable exceptions. Cartuna x Dweck, a partnership of Hannah Dweck and Ted Schaefer’s Dweck Prods. with James Belfer’s Cartuna animation studio, is launching its operations with “Dead Lover,” a horror-comedy they plan to display with scratch-and-sniff “Stink-O-Vision” playing cards. “We’ve been looking at some of the cooler, weirder types of films we’d like to get involved with, and we don’t see the market being very favorable to them,” Belfer says. “And we’d work with certain companies and things didn’t make sense to us. So we [thought], ‘Why don’t we put our energy towards distribution?” Their equal in camp would possibly just be Muscle Distribution, just lately based by movie historian Elizabeth Purchell, which focuses on basic queer underground and artwork movies.

While each of these new corporations could not earn a lot, together they’ll make an impression. “The new smaller distributors are welcomed by movie theaters, particularly independent movie theaters and smaller theater chains,” says comScore head of market tendencies Paul Dergarabedian. “Many of them fill a void by offering up films that, on their own, may not generate a ton of box office, but collectively can add to the bottom line, while simultaneously providing distribution and marketing to fledgling or overlooked films.”

It’s never been simple for unbiased filmmakers, however the emergence of so many boutique distribs affords a stark reflection of how expectations have modified. “There are literally dozens of incredible films that premiere at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW and all of these other regional film festivals,” says Lela Meadow-Conner, a board member at the unbiased exhibitor group Art House Convergence. “Yet traditional theatrical distributors’ marketing budgets have dwindled, or they’re not seeing the box office returns they had in the past. But [boutique distributors’] windows and terms are often more favorable for theaters. Some of them will even do a 50/50 split.” And a number of distribs acknowledge that theatrical is often just a loss chief. “They see theatrical as marketing, in hopes of recouping some of that money with streaming.”

One buzzword you’ll hear a lot in the indie distribution house is “bespoke,” a fancy method of claiming that each movie’s release is tailor-made particularly to that feature and its distinctive viewers. Joint Venture, a new company co-founded by Participant vet Chris Lane, guarantees to “build coalitions with filmmakers, audiences and partners to unlock the potential of each film.” It provides filmmakers a probability to have better involvement of their movie’s rollout, goal communities with particular ties to their characters or material, and supply others a probability to companion with them on a advertising and marketing campaign or screenings. For its latest release, “If You See Something,” a romantic thriller centering on an Iraqi doctor looking for political asylum in the U.S., the movie’s web site encourages viewers to affix or donate to an org that welcomes refugee households.

In February, former Sideshow exec Jason Hellerstein launched 1-2 Special, assembling a team of indie movie vets to release as much as 10 theatrical releases a 12 months. While many distribs declare to be filmmaker- pleasant, 1-2 Special goals to contain them as little or as a lot as they’d like, and to be as clear as attainable about the course of. The label obtained off to a strong start on Oct. 10 with actor Harris Dickinson’s feature directorial debut, “Urchin.”

There are also new boutique outfits that declare to be “filmmaker first” operations, the place producers get their share of box workplace before, or at the same time as, the distributors. “That is a premise that a lot of startup distributors have subscribed to, or have branded themselves as,” says leisure legal professional Elsa Ramo of Ramo Law. “And then the devil’s in the details: Is that truly how the deal is structured? Are there hidden costs and fees? Do they have a business plan that’s going to generate any revenue at all? With so much volatility in the marketplace, the best version of a deal provides some sort of advance or minimum guarantee. When you’re just dealing with revenue share, it becomes a much riskier proposition for the producer. Nothing is better than [getting] the most money upfront.”

Even though the inflow of new gamers is thrilling, Ramo says producers shouldn’t let their guard down. “In terms of evaluating distribution, you want to make sure that it’s not just about the offer on the table,” she says. “Are these companies going to have cash a year from now? Because in these cycles of emerging distributors, the one thing that hasn’t gone away is that you really need to do your due diligence.”