Disasters Averted, the Fall Festival Sales Market Has Run Out of Reasons to Be Slow

There’s never been a “normal” year in the independent film market, but this will be the first time in five years that Toronto and Venice don’t have to deal with active catastrophe. No massive labor strikes, pandemics, virtual screenings, or even overwhelming panic about the box office: Just movies seeking buyers.

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Now, only one question remains: With this newfound sense of calm, will they show up? As one sales agent put it to IndieWire: If this year turns out to be slow for indie film sales, there are “no more excuses.”

A lot happened while everyone was busy fending off disaster. It’s unclear if theatrical viewing habits will ever return to the levels of 2019 and nowhere is that more apparent than the indie sector. Back in the day, Netflix and Amazon were major buyers; today, all streamers have scaled way, way back on their acquisitions. They still have their moments — Netflix paid $17.5 million for 2024 Sundance movie “It’s What’s Inside” — but that’s more the exception that proves the rule.

Everything is in place to make this a memorable festival season. Talent is ready to promote. Distributors have clarity on their slates. And all of those strike-delayed movies had time to finish. Over 200 movies are playing across Venice, TIFF, and Telluride, and most are for sale.

At Sundance this year, some movies weren’t ready; at Cannes, packages weren’t guaranteed to kick off should IATSE or the Teamsters have gone on strike. Those fears are now behind us.

“It’s a buyer’s market,” Kristen Figeroid, head of sales at Neon, “but there’s always room to add in.”

Executive producers Kara Durrett and Jesse Burgum, who will bring their Pinky Promise-financed and Utopia-produced “The Last Showgirl” starring Pamela Anderson to TIFF, said they believe independent productions are benefitting from major studios scaling back content spend.

“In some ways, the crunch of the system has made a lot of really cool, big, studio-feeling movies able to be made independently,” Durrett said, “and now they get to bring them to market.”

She cited TIFF title “On Swift Horses” directed by Daniel Minahan (“Halston,” “Deadwood: The Movie”) as another example. In most universes, she said, a movie starring Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones would be made by a studio or streamer.

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The co-financier of “On Swift Horses” is Jenifer Westphal, whose Wavelength produced documentaries like “32 Sounds” and “Rather.” However, Westphal told IndieWire that “Horses” represents her hard pivot from documentaries to narrative features. She’s betting on the stars and recent box-office buoyancy.

Similarly, movies like Mike Flanagan’s “The Life of Chuck” starring Tom Hiddleston (TIFF) and Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” starring Angelina Jolie (Venice) were made with interim agreements during the strikes last fall.

“The Life of Chuck” producer Trevor Macy told IndieWire that the film hasn’t screened for buyers. By premiering at TIFF with an audience, he said, it gives the film the best chance to find a distributor that “understands the movie for what it is and get it in front of as many people as possible.”

One agent said sellers have become keenly sensitive to advance word on their films, whether that comes from buzz or press. When a movie does its best as a surprise, all publicity is definitely not good publicity.

For that reason, some titles are banking on being discoveries. For some more under the radar options, keep an eye on the European absurdist comedy “Kill the Jockey” out of Venice, which its sales agent Sarah Lebutsch with Protagonist Pictures compared to an early Yorgos Lanthimos or Ruben Östlund film, or “Sketch,” the feature debut of commercial director Seth Worley with a family film starring Tony Hale and D’Arcy Carden in the vein of “The Goonies” or “Gremlins.”

The current year has a few built-in hiccups: There’s the U.S. presidential election, which has some distributors looking to avoid early-November releases. And not only does the American Film Market open on Election Day, it’s also relocating to its new home in Las Vegas. One international sales agent said some buyers will focus on Venice and skip or cut short their time in TIFF to afford the trip to Vegas.

Still, none of this matters without the movies. Burgum said her company can’t chase buyers’ ever-changing mandates. They want to make movies that will be worth watching not just at the Princess of Wales Theatre next month but 10 years from now.

“In the past few years, there’s been such a massive sea change,” she said. “Everything that could have changed in the industry has changed. Indie producers and financiers are adapting to that, because to be in this industry, you have to be a little bit crazy and in love with making movies, and no one is willing to give up on that. So there’s only one option, which is, get smarter, get better at it.”