Building a Sustainable Future for Indie Film featuring Jon Reiss & Marjan Safinia

<p>Cameron sits down with<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0718505/"> <strong>Jon Reiss</strong></a> and<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0755877/"> <strong>Marjan Safinia</strong></a> to examine the structural challenges facing independent filmmaking—and why many of the assumptions that shaped the last two decades no longer hold.</p><p><a href="https://jonreiss.substack.com/"><u>Jon</u></a> is a filmmaker, author, and media strategist whose book <a href="https://thinkoutsidetheboxoffice.com/"><em>Think Outside the Box Office</em></a> has become a key resource for independent filmmakers thinking seriously about audience building and distribution. Through his company <a href="https://8above.com/"><u>8 Above</u></a>, he creates custom audience-building strategies, theatrical experiences, and digital release campaigns for independent features and documentaries—and actively distributes films himself, most recently bringing <em>The Librarians</em> to over 200 theaters. He has consulted with hundreds of filmmakers and organizations worldwide, helped run the IFP/Gotham Filmmaker Lab for a decade, and founded the 8 Above Distribution Lab to teach filmmakers how to distribute and market their work.</p><p>Marjan is an Iranian documentary filmmaker whose work—including <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0385157/"><em>Seeds</em></a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278996/"><em>But You Speak Such Good English</em></a>—has played at over 100 international festivals and been broadcast across North America, Europe, and the Arab world. She is the longest-serving president of the International Documentary Association and the only woman of color to have led the organization since its founding in 1982. A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts &amp; Sciences Documentary Branch and a Sundance Catalyst Fellow, she is also a board member of Chicken &amp; Egg Pictures and co-hosts <a href="https://www.d-word.com/"><u>The D-Word</u></a>, a leading online documentary community.</p><p>Jon is also the co-founder and board president of the<a href="https://www.futurefilmcoalition.org/"> <strong>Future Film Coalition</strong></a>, formed in 2025 to unite independent film professionals and organizations in building collective power, securing visibility, and shaping public policy that ensures U.S. independent filmmaking continues to flourish. Marjan is an active member of the coalition. </p><p>In this conversation, Jon and Marjan discuss how financing, distribution, discoverability, and audience behavior have fundamentally shifted—and why the biggest challenge facing independent filmmakers today isn&#39;t getting a film made, but building a sustainable path for it to reach an audience. They explore why distribution thinking needs to begin at the development stage, how marketing and audience strategy have become inseparable from production, and why the changing economics of streaming and theatrical exhibition make direct audience relationships more important than ever.</p><p>Finally, Jon and Marjan discuss the Future Film Coalition&#39;s broader advocacy work, including efforts to address <a href="http://blockthemerger.com"><u>media consolidation</u></a>, strengthen tax credit programs across the country, and make the case to policymakers and regulators that independent film is a significant economic force in communities across the United States.</p><p><em>The views and opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are solely their own and do not reflect the views of Wrapbook, its employees, or affiliates.</em></p><p><br></p><p><strong>ABOUT WRAPBOOK</strong></p><p><strong>Wrapbook is the AI platform for production finance.</strong></p><p>Built for today’s fast-moving production landscape, Wrapbook brings payroll, spend, and accounting into one AI-powered system—giving production teams the tools they need to do more, faster.</p><p>Built for features, TV, or commercials—Wrapbook helps the industry’s biggest production companies stay comp