Hannah Peterson‘s film “The Graduates” was stuck in limbo. Its cast included John Cho, Chloé Zhao was an executive producer, it premiered at Tribeca 2023 to excellent reviews… and, it had no distributor. But it did have a fan.
Caryn Coleman, a film programmer who runs non-profit The Future of Film Is Female, was frustrated to see Peterson’s film go unreleased. So she decided to release it herself. Coleman used her connections to land “The Graduates” a New York screening November 1 with expansion to follow, crafting the release strategy in tandem with Peterson.
But The Future of Film Is Female is not technically a distributor and Coleman hasn’t quit her day job. “The Graduates” won’t see many screens; it may be one of just two films Coleman’s company releases all year. Coleman doesn’t even expect to make back the film’s very modest budget. But the film will be seen outside New York and LA and get a better chance of finding an audience ahead of its February streaming debut.
“What we’re trying to do is redefine what success looks like for this film in particular,” Coleman told IndieWire.
Coleman is not alone among film professionals frustrated by the good but small movies that don’t sell on the festival circuit. With limited resources, there’s a movement to give these films their theatrical due with bespoke release strategies.
Call it microdistribution, but don’t call it four-walling. When a producer pays to rent a theater, often for awards consideration, “you’re just… there,” Coleman said. She’s screening “The Graduates” at the Metrograph in NY and Vidiots in LA, and the drama about the aftermath of a school shooting will also screen for teen advocates. These are, she said, “quality” screenings.
“The microbudget and small part definitely fits, but the care and attention is macro,” Coleman said.
The gold standard for microdistribution is Mike Cheslik’s “Hundreds of Beavers,” a very odd and silent black-and-white slapstick comedy that became a grassroots cult hit. The film premiered in 2022, spent more than a year playing 50 different festivals, and only opened in theaters in January 2024. On a budget of $150,000, “Hundreds of Beavers” has made over $700,000 worldwide — all from a film that never found a theatrical distributor.
“There was nobody coming in to save us,” producer Kurt Ravenwood said. “We knew that for this movie to to succeed, a black-and-white movie with no stars and no dialogue, it had to be a bit of an event.”
A few distributors showed interest but theatrical would have meant a week’s run in theaters before streaming. It was “checking a box,” said producer Matt Sbaljak.
“The whole theatrical run was not a means to an end,” he said. “It was the very essence of this film.”
So the “Beavers” team took the risk of holding onto its theatrical rights. Rather than play the room at CinemaCon, they teamed with veteran distributor Jessica Rosner, who loved the film, and devised the Great Lakes Roadshow, a 14-day tour across the Midwest with live Q&As and vaudeville moments.
It finally made its way to the coasts, but “Hundreds of Beavers” has never played on more than 30 screens at a time. It continues to perform, although it’s been available on streaming since April.
One reason a traditional distributor avoids a movie like “Hundreds of Beavers” is it’s unlikely to hit the profit margins a distributor needs to justify its spot on a release slate. On that basis, many microbudget films aren’t worth it.
That’s a problem Jasper Basch often observed as former distributor with IFC Films and in his role as head of distribution at Variance Films. When he saw “Free Time” and “Summer Solstice” rejected by traditional buyers, Basch didn’t want the movies to “get smushed out of the market entirely” and launched one-man distribution shop Cartilage Films.
Cartilage got “Free Time,” a 78-minute-long comedy, on 30 screens this spring across seven weeks; it grossed $23,000. That could be a “disaster” for another distributor, but it’s not “my disaster,” Basch said. He didn’t play by the usual distributor rules: “Free Time” wasn’t required to play a specific number of weeks, have exclusivity in certain markets, and it found holes in art houses’ schedules away from other specialized releases.
Basch knows he won’t get rich on a film like this. Anyone would tell him the amount of money he spent on marketing wouldn’t be worth his time. But Cartilage Films exists “to save these movies,” he said. A theatrical run now may be the difference between these filmmakers getting another chance in the future.
“I hope they have second features,” Basch said. “I hope I can’t afford them.”
