Last week marked the final late deadline for the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Best of luck to all who play; the next two months will be an exercise in raw anxiety. Last year, Sundance screened 151 projects out of 15,775 submissions, a success rate of just under one percent.
That ratio underscores a longstanding truth: Sundance has always been a crapshoot. My first festival was 1995, when the Narrative Grand Jury prize was split between Edward Burns’ “The Brothers McMullen” (Fox Searchlight acquisition) and Benjamin Ross’ “The Young Poisoner’s Handbook” (released by now-defunct home video company Cabin Fever Entertainment). Neither of 2025’s Grand Jury winners — “Atropia” in narrative or “Seeds” in documentary — has yet found distribution.
I point this out not to depress filmmakers or to point fingers. Some argue that since Sundance is a gatekeeper (yes) and provides the biggest theatrical experience many of these films receive (true), it’s also responsible for paying filmmakers or providing more help finding buyers.
I don’t buy that at all. In fact, I think it would serve those nearly 16,000 filmmakers much better if they didn’t view Sundance — hell, the festival circuit itself — as an endgame. What if it was just one possible, maybe, who-knows path? And what if they devoted more of that anxious energy to cultivating communities around their work — communities that could support future projects, buy tickets, spread the word?
A case study arrives this fall: “Skit,” a $65,000 comedy produced under SAG’s ultra-low-budget agreement and financed by media analyst and former TV executive Evan Shapiro. The debut of directors Des Lombardo and Badr Mastrouq will premiere November 14 as a one-month exclusive on Tubi, then roll out with FilmHub. Shapiro is comfortable with grand pronouncements: He believes “Skit” is a manifestation of what he calls “the affinity economy” and calls it “an example of the next era of film.”
He’s not talking about the critical heft of “Skit,” which he describes as “a very, very silly comedy.” He means the conditions of its making: a project by young filmmakers, shot for little money, built for and around its own community, and treating them as sounding board, support system, and audience.
“To me, this is the model of new independent film,” Shapiro said. “That $1 million to $5 million film that everybody keeps getting stuck on… that’s just not going to work anymore.The market for these films is the audience, not the gatekeepers. You have to be able to go directly to the audience as quickly as you possibly can, at a set of economics that allow you to get a return on your investment. Then you can start to justify bigger-budget films. But even then, you still need to cultivate that community.”
As I noted last week, the affinity economy flies in the face of auteur theory — but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. He’s also not the first to identify the need for community: Emily Best of crowdfunding platform Seed&Spark has long advocated for its role in production and utilized it to produce a short she recently directed, “Mr. Jesus.”
“Your plan A is, ‘I develop a relationship with my audience. I know where I’m going to distribute it. I know how I’m going to distribute it. I know how I’m going to market it.’ And your plan B is, “But if I get into a major festival, here’s how I can leverage all the things that I built,’” Best said.
Of course, easier said than done: Building community, whether in person or online (ideally, both), takes a lot longer than, say, an 18-day shoot. (“Skit” wrapped in eight.) “It’s really hard to reverse engineer,” Best said. “But to Evan’s point, the earlier you start, the better.”
“Skit” has a mouthpiece in Shapiro, who presents at conferences around the world and has roughly 100,000 followers. The film stars young comedians Alise Morales, Nataly Aukar, Jamie Linn Watson, and Shang Forbes, with over 400,000 combined Instagram followers. Best knows numbers like that can feel deflating, since most filmmakers are neither global speakers nor hot young comedians.
“It is simply not true that everybody needs to go out and become a social media maven,” said Best, who is now developing “The Community Producer Playbook” with producer Ivan Askwith and Kinema’s Christie Marchese. (You should also check out Kinema and Seed&Spark’s open-source “The Distribution Playbook.”)
“You do need to design strategies to gather audiences around what you’re making and give them a good experience,” said Best. “That’s not getting taught in film schools. It’s not prioritized by funders. If you had [community producer] as a line item in your budget, people will be like, ‘What is this?’”
Which brings me to you, the In Development community: Do you buy this argument? Do you think that filmmakers should — even, must — develop their own audiences?
I ask because, frankly, it’s taken me years to come around to this. The business of indie film has always valued star power far more than grassroots anything.
I also ask because indie film deserves to live long and prosper, but the familiar systems no longer serve most of its constituents.
Much is beyond anyone’s control, but that doesn’t prevent carving out a new path. A community-based, self-directed approach feels like optimism: Instead of depending on strangers or gatekeepers, you place the bet on yourself. And in the current state of — well, everything — that seems like the most reasonable risk to take.
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