independent-film
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The Film Streamer That Turned Taste Into a Studio
MUBI began with one impossible-to-find Wong Kar-wai film. It has since built a business that can discover a movie at a festival, put it in theaters, stream it at home and keep the conversation alive in print.
Level Forward
Level Forward is a Los Angeles-based public benefit entertainment company co-founded in 2018 by philanthropist and filmmaker Abigail Disney and producer Adrienne Becker. It develops, produces, and finances films, documentaries, and stage productions that pair commercial ambition with social progress, backing work such as the film The Assistant and the Tony-nominated Broadway shows Jagged Little Pill, Slave Play, and What the Constitution Means to Me. Legally bound to weigh profit against public benefit, the company routes a share of proceeds and cultural attention toward nonprofit partners working on gender and racial equity, youth empowerment, and gun-violence prevention.
Pressman Film
Pressman Film is a Los Angeles-based independent production company founded in 1969 by the late producer Edward R. Pressman and now led by his son, CEO Sam Pressman. With more than 100 motion pictures to its name - including Badlands, Conan the Barbarian, Wall Street, The Crow and American Psycho - the company has a long history of backing risky, director-driven cinema before the rest of Hollywood catches on. Today it is expanding into television, virtual-reality storytelling (the Cate Blanchett/Terrence Malick VR piece Evolver), stage work and experimental, blockchain-enabled film financing that lets everyday fans invest in its development slate.
Adrienne Becker
Adrienne Becker is the CEO and co-founder of Level Forward, the public-benefit entertainment studio she launched in 2018 with filmmaker Abigail Disney. From a Los Angeles base, she finances and produces films and stage work that pair compelling stories with real-world advocacy - a slate that has earned a combined 37 Tony nominations (Jagged Little Pill, Oklahoma!, Slave Play, What the Constitution Means to Me, Suffs) and Oscar-recognized films (The Assistant, Red White and Blue). A former CEO of DailyCandy and SVP at Nielsen and IAC who got her start on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, Becker treats entertainment as a tool for economic and cultural change.
Sam Pressman
Sam Pressman is the CEO of Pressman Film, the storied independent studio his father Edward R. Pressman founded in 1969 and that backed American Psycho, Wall Street, Badlands and The Crow. A Stanford Film & Media Studies graduate who grew up on his father's sets, Sam took the helm after Ed's death in 2023 and is betting that independent cinema's next chapter runs on radical filmmakers, crowd-sourced financing, virtual reality and AI - while keeping his father's motto, 'every film is a miracle,' close.