Premiering at an A-list festival is no longer a guarantee a film will take off in the market, according to Shoshi Korman, co-managing director at international sales and advisory firm Cinephil.

Korman, speaking at the Hot Docs industry panel Pulse Check: The Documentary Landscape in 2024 on Wednesday (May 1), said she has been seeing filmmakers going into these festivals with the expectation that their project will be picked up by a big streamer.

“And then it [the film] would go to the Oscars. And if that didn’t happen, your film would be a failure. Which is ridiculous,” she said, adding that each film can have a different trajectory and still get “great distribution.”

As a sales company, Cinephil wouldn’t be too shaken if a film doesn’t get a good response at a festival, she said.

“Our criteria to select a film is: do we like it? Do we believe we can sell it? … and we make sure that it doesn’t conflict with anything already in our catalogue.”

On the theatrical front, Korman said that while it would be ideal to have each film playing at a cinema, it shouldn’t be a “make or break” in distribution deals.

“Sometimes filmmakers would rather take a lower offer but have a cinema release. Sometimes they would rather it be available everywhere that Netflix is available or everywhere that Disney+ is available. You have to have a tough conversation with yourself about what you want for the film?.”

Korman said it is vital for filmmakers to engage with sales agents as early as possible in their film journey to pinpoint their vision for the project.

“If your film has already premiered, it’s very late.”

Speaking on the current state of the doc market, Korman said the industry is in a “mess,” with filmmakers, sales agents and distributors having to tackle the perfect storm of the pandemic, closures, shrinking ancillary markets and mergers, which were further closing out options for docs.

“2023 was a slow year for everyone and there weren’t a lot of big deals being done,” adding that there is “cautious optimism” in 2024 following sales activity at Sundance.

She cited the example of the Bhutan-Hungary coproduction Agent of Happiness for this optimism. The doc, which follows a group of agents who measure Bhutan’s Gross Happiness Index, has secured theatrical release in multiple international territories after debuting at Sundance this year.

“I think that’s because people were desperate for some happiness, for something a bit more lighter,” she concluded.

Photo by Joseph Michael for Hot Docs