Independent film veteran Mark Sayre launched The Forge during the pandemic after years of frustration as a producer working with problematic distributors who wouldn’t keep him in the loop and invested little in marketing efforts.
From Vashon Island, Washington, he’s built the boutique distributor on a model of radical transparency — providing detailed line item reporting and openly sharing revenue figures with filmmakers, practices he says are rare in independent distribution.
“I came into distribution the way I think a lot of filmmakers do — through pain,” Sayre tells TheWrap’s Office With a View series. “As a producer, I licensed films to distributors who barely communicated with me. They invested little to nothing in the marketing. The films were all released quietly, almost anonymously. And of course, if a film isn’t marketed, the only people who ever see the money are the distributor or the sales agents. The filmmakers almost never see a dime.”
When the pandemic hit, Sayre had spent nearly two decades in Los Angeles working across distribution and production. He began his career on the film distribution side at Xenon Pictures in the early 2000s, then the largest distributor of urban Spanish language alternative programming in the U.S., before moving into producing, where he says “the real education began.” The pandemic forced him back to Vashon Island and gave him time to rethink the entire distribution model.
“When the pandemic started, it gave me time to pause and reflect on what these failures were and to try to design a new model for distribution and sales, one that I would want to work with, rooted in transparency and collaboration and genuine alignment between the distributor and the filmmaker,” he added.
The Forge released Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut “The Chronology of Water,” on Jan. 9 and the film has garnered $205,771 in box office from just 37 locations, according to The Numbers. The film made its world premiere last spring at the Cannes Film Festival and is sitting at 89% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
“The next chapter of independent film is going to really be defined by honesty,” Sayre tells TheWrap.
You started as a producer, then built The Forge into a foreign sales company, and now you’re a North American distributor. What was the moment you decided to make that leap?
The pandemic forced me to reevaluate what I felt like an effective model was going to be. The deeper problem to me was this fundamental lack of collaboration. I would license a film, and the next time I’d hear from a distributor was when a report was due, if I heard from them at all. The idea that the creator would have no meaningful involvement in how their film was released just felt deeply wrong to me.
My original intent wasn’t to distribute other people’s films. It was to continue producing but to have a vehicle to release movies I was going to make in the future and not be reliant on third parties. What ultimately happened was I started having conversations with contemporaries about this alternative model I was developing, and they would ask, would you help distribute our title or assist with sales on this project? We started to have some early success doing that, and now that’s all we’re doing.
Your pitch materials emphasize that The Forge is “by filmmakers for filmmakers.” What does that actually mean in practice?
When we acquire a film, we don’t see ourselves as gatekeepers. We see ourselves as partners. Chemistry and alignment really matter. We want to share a vision with the filmmakers that we can execute together. Independent films succeed only when everyone is rowing in the same direction, strategically, logistically, creatively.
The big difference maker for us is that we actually market the films we acquire, even with boutique resources. We don’t pick up anything we don’t believe in. If we take a film, it’s because we believe there’s an audience for it. Every film gets at least a limited theatrical release. We have PR support, a paid media strategy, programmatic and print advertising when it’s justified. We don’t just dump release anything.
On the accounting side, we operate with the highest transparency we possibly can. We provide detailed line item reporting. We include the underlying documents we receive. We recoup only actual third party expenses that we paid out of pocket. There aren’t these hidden fees, whether it’s a marketing fee or delivery fee. Our waterfall is super simple. It’s just our distribution fee, our real costs, and then the rest flows to the filmmakers.
You’ve got Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut “The Chronology of Water” coming up and “Black Dog” got Independent Spirit nominations. You’re three years old as a distributor. How are you competing with the established players for awards attention and prestige projects?
“The Chronology of Water” is emblematic of everything we want The Forge to stand for. It’s bold, intimate, uncompromising, deeply personal, but also cinematic and accessible in a way that invites audiences in rather than pushing them away. Kristen didn’t approach this as a vanity project or debut by committee. She directed it with total conviction. From the moment we saw the film in Cannes, we knew it wasn’t just a film, it was a statement, and that was something we wanted to be a part of.
What excited us most was that it sits at this intersection of artistry and market value. It’s a film that has real cultural weight anchored by Kristen as a filmmaker and Imogen (Poots) delivering what is unquestionably, in my opinion, the performance of her career. That combination allows us to build a release strategy that’s ambitious but grounded in reality.
Historically, we cut our teeth on prestige world cinema and documentaries—films like “Black Dog” or “Suro” or “We Were Dangerous.” These films that we found at Cannes or Sundance or South by Southwest really helped establish our taste and credibility globally. But we’re now looking to expand into the prestigious domestic space as well. “The Chronology of Water” signals films that still have a really strong artistic spine like the rest of our slate, but also clear pathways to audiences here at home.
Netflix is acquiring Warner Bros., Paramount is ramping up theatrical releases, Apple and Amazon are in the film business. What does the theatrical landscape look like for a boutique distributor like The Forge? Where do you see the company in five years?
For most of the titles we’ve acquired, theatrical is often a loss leader at the independent level. It builds cultural awareness but maybe not revenue. The limited engagements sometimes don’t recoup what the spend is, but you have to think of them as part of your marketing.
With “Chronology,” we had a pretty strong opening week in New York and LA with full week PTAs at about $13,500, which for me is super respectable. But it does mean you really have to be in partnership with the filmmakers and collaborate. We have to show up as a distributor and as a filmmaking team. Q&As are super important, engaging with the audience is super important. Every dollar matters for us. We have to spend them strategically, thoughtfully and intentionally, and we need to work together to make sure we can reach the widest audience possible despite those limitations.
You’ve distributed music documentaries, Mexican dramas, Chinese art house films, Maori reform school stories and French horror comedies. What’s the connective tissue? How do you decide what The Forge releases?
To date, the simple answer is just stuff that we like, that we want to watch. In particular, it’s stuff that we want to watch that maybe otherwise isn’t having the opportunity to be seen.
My vision for The Forge is to build a modern prestige distributor, one that can sit credibly alongside companies like A24 and Neon, but with a slightly different DNA. We’re not trying to be everything to everyone. We want to be known for care and taste and transparency and long term relationships.
I think there’s a real vacuum opening in the marketplace as some larger independents are forced to move toward more commercial, blockbuster driven strategies. Should the Netflix Warner Bros. deal go through, this is going to leave filmmakers with singular voices searching for partners who actually fight for their work. That’s the space I’m hoping we can continue to step into.
This old mythology that every great indie will magically break out just isn’t true anymore. Filmmakers deserve clear-eyed conversations about what’s possible, what isn’t, what trade-offs they’re making.
At the same time, I don’t want to be all doom and gloom. I’m deeply optimistic. Some of the most extraordinary films are being made today, and many of them are coming from outside the traditional power centers. Many of them aren’t English, they’re world cinema titles. If independent cinema is going to survive, we have to build sustainable ecosystems around these films, not just celebrate them at festivals and then abandon them. That means creating new infrastructure that supports that work long after the premiere.
The ultimate responsibility also rests with the audience. Distributors have to do a better job of making these films visible and accessible, and that’s what we’re trying to do. But audiences also have to meet them halfway. If people don’t show up, the system isn’t going to change. Saving independent film has to be a shared responsibility.