Oscar-winning Chilean producer Juan de Dios Larraín (Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman), who earlier this year launched direct-to-audience distribution platform Pijama for independent, undistributed films with brother and director Pablo Larraín (El Conde), thinks film festivals, such as Sundance, will need to consider offering a distribution path for the films they feature.

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He appeared in a discussion at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF)’s KVIFF Industry Days strand in the Czech spa town on Monday that was entitled “The Future of Film Distribution Is Already Here: Same Problem – Opposite Directions.” He was joined by Steffen Kottkamp of Directors Collection, a soon-to-launch venture of Weydemann Bros. that is focused on AVOD and FAST channel distribution strategies, along side moderator Diana Lodderhose, Deadline Hollywood‘s international features editor.

“I know that the people behind Sundance are very worried about what’s going on, because the movies that go to Sundance are getting less and less distribution opportunities. So they feel responsible,” Larraín said of the independent film industry’s distribution challenges.

The Chilean producer, who won a 2018 international feature film Oscar as a producer on A Fantastic Woman (Una Mujer Fantástica), pointed to Karlovy Vary’s streaming platform KVIFF.TV as proof that the industry needs new distribution channels: “Is Sundance responsible for the future of the films that they bring to life? I don’t know. Can they do better? Yes. How? I don’t know — again. … But I would say that the answer is that at some point Sundance will need to be, as Karlovy Vary is here, a distribution platform.”

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Larraín on Monday also discussed the rationale behind launching Pijama. “The fact that your movie doesn’t find distribution doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have an audience,” he highlighted. “Every movie has an audience — maybe it’s 10 people, maybe it’s your family, schoolmates, some friends, 100, maybe just 1,000, maybe 10,000.”

Added Larraín: “But if you don’t have a way to connect your movie with that … whatever the number is, how can you monetize your work? So that is the reason that Pijama was born.”

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