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Knowing the Rich, Staying in LA (?) and Other Takeaways from the 2025 Film Independent Forum
Going Nowhere If it’s true that the rich are getting richer faster than at any point in American history, then independent producers should devise ways to lure their dollars into films. That was one of three recurring finance-focused sentiments expressed at the 20th annual Film Independent Forum, a focused, thoughtfully curated two-day event that took place on 26-27 September at the plush Directors Guild of America headquarters in Los Angeles.
Events included a “sacred and private” keynote fireside conversation in the main DGA theater with the sage Gina Prince-Bythewood (on the 25th anniversary of Love and Basketball) led by creator Lena Waithe; post-happy hour screenings of Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams and Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman; two presentations by sponsors IMDb Pro and ShotDeck in the small hall; a number of timely panels; and two Industry Connect sessions where attending emerging filmmakers signed up for 12-minute one-on-one meetings with an array of more than 30 industry professionals.
To watch waves of emerging filmmakers as well as other Film Independent cohorts from its robust global and educational programs work the room—for instance, the Red Sea Labs’ 2025 cohort was in town for the LA section of their fellowship, and one determined mid-career French woman had flown in from Paris to market her chamber dramatic thriller—would lead you to believe that there isn’t a matching wave of xenophobia and censorship existentially threatening the industry. The latest gen of global newbies cheerily mingled in the standby line hoping to be matched to mentors and packed the three auditoriums, where the panels took place. Certainly, at a time when DEI has been buried, the genuine range in folks’ backgrounds and projects made for a necessary cultural antidote and the DGA lobby a veritable safe space. Here are some takeaways from the two-day event.
1. “It’s important for us to put ourselves in the shoes of rich people”: Filmmaker Izzy Shill on fiscal sponsorship as an underrated fundraising route
Industry fora in LA inevitably double up as marketing platforms for those that organize and sponsor them. Film Independent runs a fiscal sponsorship program, as do other non-profits such as The Gotham and Fractured Atlas. Using such a program, which enables an individual or entity to receive donations from foundations and individual donors, who can then deduct these donations as charitable contributions, was prominently discussed across two panels aimed at demystifying financing.
In the standing-room-only Saturday afternoon panel “The Money Puzzle: Financing Piece by Piece,” filmmaker Izzy Shill laid out how she used Film Independent’s fiscal sponsorship program to fund part of her first feature Going Nowhere, which had a budget of $125,000. She connected her writer, director and producer hats in a single sentence when she said that if filmmakers spend so much time putting themselves in the shoes of their characters, they also need to put themselves in the shoes of donors (as opposed to investors, noted moderator Daniel Cardone, Senior Manager, Nonfiction Programs and Fiscal Sponsorship at Film Independent). “Asking for money is developing a tolerance for being uncomfortable,” Shill said. “Having grown up [across] several strata, I can at times feel resentful of people who have a lot of money. It’s important for us to put ourselves in their shoes. It can be really alienating to have those kinds of funds. We want to incentivize people to give us money. Everybody who [donates] is buying an experience, and it is your job to figure out what experience they’re purchasing and to be able to provide it for them.”
Shill went on to say that some lawyers who wanted to donate to her film were curious about what film contracts looked like, so she connected them to her own entertainment lawyer. Others wanted to get local crews in Kentucky working, which was her mission too. One wanted a part in her movie. She already had written one that would fit so when this investor said, “I’ll do it for $2,500,” she cheekily responded, “That part costs $10,000.” Her conclusion: “Everyone has their own agenda and having compassion for that agenda is important.”
The second panelist, Jen Blake, Partner at Diversity Hire and the former Senior Manager of the Sundance Episodic Program, laid out a case study of her latest feature as a producer, Cyril Aris’s A Sad and Beautiful World, which premiered at the Venice Biennale and is Lebanon’s submission to the 2026 Academy Award for International Feature. Blake said that fiscal sponsorship was invaluable for her film’s last leg of financing, one which she had not fully accounted for in the film’s budget: flying and hosting the cast and crew at Venice. The lion’s share of the Greek-German-Lebanese-American co-production had come from non-recoupable funds (monies that do not have to be paid back to investors) raised by fellow producer Georges Schoucair, who has deep connections in the MENA region, and from nine grants, only one of which was American.
For the fiscal sponsorship piece of the puzzle, Blake said, “I was at the point where I didn’t have shame in asking people for money, because we could show [production] footage, and it was that time of the year when were people were starting to look at their charitable trusts.” Besides, she added, “You can tell in a meeting if someone’s really interested in giving money.” Many people, including an American raised in Beirut and three friends he brought on, just felt proud that this was an unexpected film from Lebanon. Blake said, “I saw how much a movie from Beirut that doesn’t have war at its center is revolutionary for that community.” Hearing these stories about courting people for charitable donations made the third panelist, documentary producer Sarah Strunin (Jaripeo) quip, “The next stage of my producer’s journey is to meet more rich people.”
Earlier that morning at the popular live pitching clinic, an all-women financier and producer panel prepared the audience and the pitching filmmakers by providing more general, entry-level advice and laying out financing terminology. This made for a subtle yet successful curation tactic throughout the weekend: earlier panels would provide the groundwork for later panels’ more involved discussions. When she introduced the session, Maria Bozzi, Film Independent’s Senior Director of Education and International Programs, humorously emphasized that the panel would provide “a very tiny snapshot. We are not solving the problem today.” And yet, thanks to moderator Angela Lee, Film Independent’s Director of Artist Development, each panelist defined key terms such as equity, grants, fiscal sponsorship, tax credits, cash rebates, and recoupable versus non-recoupable financing. Julia Nelson, Executive at 2AM, said that typical private equity deals begin by offering investors a potential initial 20% return on their investment.
Brenda Robinson, a member of the film financing collective Impact Partners as well as Film Independent’s Acting President, pointed out that more grant money is now seeping into scripted film, something Jen Blake in the afternoon panel would confirm. And to my earlier point about diversity in panelists’ perspectives, Chris Quintos Cathcart, Co-CEO of film fund Unapologetic Projects, added a wrinkle to Nelson’s 20% ROI figure by suggesting that ROI can also be reconceived as “Return on Impact.”
Looping back to fiscal sponsorship and speaking forward to Shill’s point about imagining how donors feel about being approached, Robinson observed that people should and often do “fund from a place of wanting to uplift.” The producer’s job might be to remind them that a film is not like a piece of real estate that can be flipped. Producers should treat investors not just as someone who writes a check but a partner that you can keep going back to. “Form your board of angels early,” was her parting advice, stating that “the person with the funds isn’t more at an advantage as you.” Even if they don’t end up being your funder on this project, “There’s admiration that goes into a pitch.” Rich people aren’t mystical beings, they also want to be seen and want to be in a relationship with you.
2. “If it’s not a fuck yes, it’s a no!”: Knowing who you’re pitching to and other intimations for being fully prepped
Know who you’re pitching to — that was the most repeated advice from Saturday’s pitch clinic panelists. Cathcart, said, “By the time you come to me, I’ve already read your script and want to know if I can trust you, since I can’t be holding your hand each day. So don’t tell me the plot.” Nicole Arbusto, the casting director behind projects such as His Three Daughters, spoke about being pitched — and pitching — scripts. “It’s never easy to get people to read things that are not financed,” she said. “I’m often the first person pitching scripts, because agents don’t read scripts. Sorry folks!” She also advised writer-directors to wait until they have a strong producer on board before they pitch, because folks like her would “rather work with a great producer and a good director” than the other way around.
After the discussion section, three film teams came up to the stage to pitch their projects, in a living room conversational style. Each was well prepared and stayed within the allotted time, and the panelists had sage advice for each. To documentary duo Tracy Jarrett and Rebecca Stern, who pitched their project Retrieval, where the main character must decide if they must conduct a post mortem sperm retrieval for IVF purposes, Arbusto advised the filmmakers to not go through the beats and instead say upfront their personal connection to the project. Nelson told them to also explicitly state the form in which they received their prior funding (grants), and also to highlight that they are in post production, have raised three quarters of their budget and are looking just for the last stretch. By contrast, producer Jesus Garcia, who pitched the erotic thriller Queerbait, by writer-director Nate Gualtieri (one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of 2025), in an accessible, conversational manner, received the feedback that he might introduce the project in sections (i.e., be less discursive) and pinpoint the key target audience. The final project, Uncle Hiep’s Casino, pitched by producer duo Betty Xu and Rui M. Xu, was praised by all panelists, with the only missing aspect being tonal comps.
Pitching was also a motif in the high-profile panel to close out the Forum, “Producers at the Table: Independent Producing in Uncertain Times.” Moderator Gita Pullapilly, a filmmaker herself (Beneath the Harvest Sky), posed a sensitive question: how does this group of producers pick a project when they know they may not get paid for a long time, if at all? Lauren Mann (Swiss Army Man, Joyland) channeled the mantra of Margot Robbie’s production company, Lucky Chap, and said simply, “If it’s not a fuck yes, it’s a no!” Mann, who is a financier as well as a producer, would go on to elaborate that she is a “weird art film freak” but is highly selective about the project she takes on. She admits she comes from a place of extreme privilege (in that she and her partner have their own funds they can invest), but she always assumes she won’t make her money back, so for her it’s important to be transparent with all her investor partners about this status. Having said that, she enjoys working with promising first-time filmmakers because she feels she can guide them, and the prime area in which she can do so is being responsible with budget. She has a knack for knowing if “the package being put together is wildly unrealistic.”
Sev Ohanian, Co-Founder along with Zinzi and Ryan Coogler of Proximity Media and a producer on Sinners, shared Mann’s emphasis on a slim, tight budget, especially for independent projects that don’t go through the studio system. Ohanian revealed a metric he developed called “P.U.G.S” that his fellow panelists readily latched on to as they furnished their own examples. Ohanian uses PUGS to evaluate scripts. ‘P’ stands for “propulsive.” Does the script have narrative momentum? He makes a subtle distinction: “It’s really about each scene being a ‘but then’ and a ‘therefore’ instead of an ‘and then’.” U’ stands for “unique,” weird, fresh; ‘G’ is genre blending. Ohanian theorizes that today’s audiences are hungry for two (or more) genres in one, pointing to Sinners as a horror musical gangster drama. ‘S’ is for surprising; he wants a “script that 20 pages in, I can never guess the third act.” Later in the panel, he succinctly put forth his advice for pitching: “Can you tell your important thematic story that’s the heart of who you are and envelope it around a genre in a way that people will fight to finance it.”
3. “Death by a 1000 paper cuts” — #StayinLA Co-Founder Pamala Buzick Kim on LA’s crisis as a shooting location as productions go international or to other states
A third refrain across the Forum weekend was how L.A. productions were moving internationally for lower costs or to other states because of tax credits. In the “Producers on the Table” panel, Aaron T. Edmonds, VP of Film at Hartbeat, said that Netflix, where Kevin Hart has a deal, wants to shoot at places like New Jersey (where they are building new studios), Budapest and London. Lila Yacoub, producer of projects such as East of Wall and Lady Bird, hails from a line producer background and said the issue boils down to basic math: “It makes me really upset,” said Yacoub. “I live here, I want to work here. But, unfortunately, the cost of fringe benefits on crew is so high. I have a project that has a California tax credit, which is really hard to get, but I can’t find enough money to make it. So now I’m investigating Spain.” Ryan Zacarias, producer of If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, semi-joked that below-the-line rates in places like Bulgaria and Hungary are so low that, when he saw the rates for a grip, “I thought there were zeros missing.” The US can be up to five times more expensive. On a recent production, he said, “We had tanks in the movie, and over there, tanks are kind of free!”
Saving Los Angeles was a matter of no joke over at the “Home Grown: Spotlight on L.A.” panel that featured some of the most passionate and activism-oriented discourse at the Forum, including engaged participation from the significantly smaller audience (perhaps itself a sign about production recession in the city). Even though runaway productions (to Canada, for instance) have been a challenge in previous decades, the current crisis — following the 2023 strikes and the January, 2025 fires — appears to be like no other. Moderator Shari Page set the scene with a few stats. 2024 was the worst year, with production filming down 40%. What happened? TV producer Missy Mansour (Running Point) said that though leads on her show want to stay in LA, studios want lower costs. Moreover, Los Angeles councils have a lot of say on what gets shot in a neighborhood. This was in contrast to what Shills, giving the example of Louisville, Kentucky, said on the previous panel: the council there was simply concerned if they were blocking the street; if not, they didn’t bother.
The most vocal panelist on “Home Grown,” Pamala Buzick Kim, co-founder of grassroots organization #StayinLA, went as far as to say that LA is experiencing a death by 1,000 paper cuts. Citing evidence of price gouging and practically non-existent permit reform at the city council level, she said, “We are taking our city for granted. We always thought because we’re Hollywood, work would stay here. But we will always be more expensive if we don’t have affordable housing and universal health care.” This last proclamation drew jubilant applause. She went on to report that in the 130 days since Mayor Karen Bass’s directive, and even after Buzick Kim attending more than 60 meetings, there has been no movement on permitting reform. She pleaded with the audience to join their town councils and show up for meetings.
Lila Yacoub said, however, that she believes that in long run things are cyclical, and that if everyone runs to international locations, things will become expensive over there and productions will move back to the US. Until then, the weekend’s panelists at the Film Independent Forum seemed to say: court the rich, perfect your pitch and work through a location’s hitch.
