When Sasha Leigh Henry’s acclaimed TV show was canceled and development pipelines slowed to a crawl, she decided not to wait years for permission to reach audiences again.
Instead, she made her feature debut “Dinner With Friends” on a $100,000 micro-budget, and is now releasing it herself.
The Toronto filmmaker decided to act last year when Bell Media canceled her Crave series “Bria Mack Gets a Life” after one season, citing low audience numbers despite winning the Canadian Screen Award for best TV comedy, and after being denied Telefilm Talent to Watch funding.
“Nothing makes you say ‘eff it’ like your award-winning show not getting renewed,” says Henry. She shot the film — an intimate look at the bonds and fractures within a Black friend group — in just nine days.
Henry is taking the same DIY approach to distribution, bypassing a traditional theatrical release to debut the film on digital rental, reach audiences via social media and host event-style screenings with cast members in multiple cities.
“I make things without the traditional players because the one time I worked with the traditional players, they didn’t get me a new audience,” she says.
She argues the issue goes beyond her own experience. Canada’s film and TV institutions, she says, often imagine a narrow version of the public and struggle to market BIPOC-led work.
A recent study by the Racial Equity Media Collective found most organizations in Canada’s screen sector don’t collect meaningful race-based data, and when they do, it shows persistent underrepresentation and underfunding of BIPOC creators.
“We suffer from a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she says.
“If it’s not something like ‘Corner Gas’ then it’s assumed no one in Canada will want it.”
Henry says holding onto her theatrical rights allows her to reach viewers more directly and intentionally.
“A lot of these organizations operate in a framework that doesn’t reward taking risks or going the extra mile for an unproven independent film,” she says.
“No one really cares more about your film than you.”
Henry is among a growing number of Canadian creators bypassing traditional distributors to take control over how their work finds audiences.
The Canadian theatrical market is dominated by a handful of major players — including companies such as Elevation Pictures and Mongrel Media, neither of whom provided comment for this article — alongside dozens of smaller distributors with limited resources.
Streaming platforms, pandemic-era viewing shifts and shrinking theatrical windows have squeezed revenues. Filmmakers say the pressure has made distributors more selective, prioritizing lower-risk commercial titles and sidelining smaller, culturally specific projects.
Canadian distributors’ investment in homegrown film and television fell 31.6 per cent last year, according to the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA).
The response for some creators has been DIY distribution — or microdistribution, as some call it — which flips the system by focusing resources on a single film and giving creators control over marketing, theatrical rollout and rights.
The strategy worked for Sook-Yin Lee’s sex-work dramedy “Paying for It,” which had a staggered rollout to 48 Canadian cities. The team partnered with indie cinemas, community groups, bookstores, and local press, often hosting screenings with Q&As featuring creators and cast.
“Touring ‘Paying For It’ in a grassroots manner got more bums in seats than my previous movies, distributed by big industry players to empty chain theatres,” Lee says.
Dan Montgomery, co-founder of Toronto production and distribution company MDFF, describes Canada’s current distribution landscape as “tenuous” and increasingly competitive, with more films being produced and fewer distributors to support them.
That dynamic, he says, leads some distributors to filter out “bold and audacious” films in favour of titles that seem more commercially viable.
“It’s hard for a big distributor to sign on to a first or second feature with a director that doesn’t have a track record and an unknown cast.”
“Paying For It” producer Aeschylus Poulous says microdistribution offers a viable path for indie filmmakers facing those challenges, as well as broader industry headwinds.
Canadian films accounted for just 1.4 per cent of the country’s theatrical revenues in the English-language market in 2023, according to the CMPA.
Poulous says the “Paying For It” team wanted to “event-ize the film and give people a reason to come out,” while also reaching audiences outside the typical cinephile crowd. One Toronto screening was in collaboration with sex-worker advocacy group Maggie’s and featured a Q&A with activists in the community.
The strategy also preserves creative ownership. More filmmakers are reluctant to sign away rights for long periods – which can span up to 25 years – especially amid industry turbulence.
“This idea of holding onto libraries by the creatives and producers who made the work is also hedging against the uncertainty of where things are going,” says Poulous.
The approach resonates with Inuk director Zacharias Kunuk, whose latest fantasy feature “Wrong Husband” was released through his own company, Isuma Productions. He decided to self-release years ago after mainstream distributors initially pressured him to overdub the film into English — advice he rejected.
“I want our language to be heard, our beautiful language,” he says, explaining how his film preserves Inuit naming traditions and cultural storytelling.
Self-distribution also allows Kunuk to take “Wrong Husband” directly to his audience. With only one theater in Iqaluit and no other cinema infrastructure in the Arctic, he’s hosted screenings in gymnasiums and community centers, reaching students, elders and local organizations.
“If we follow the system, we’re not supposed to show it here,” he says.
“But we love to do these things. It helps our community.”
Toronto filmmaker Ron Dias and his writing partner Joanne Jansen say they were in a bind when their drama “Morningside” lost its distributor weeks before production.
Still, they refused to give up on the film, which follows seven interconnected lives at a Scarborough community centre. Dias and Jansen filled the $150,000 hole the distributor left with support from friends and family, while U.S. streamer AllBlk covered the rest of the $800,000 budget.
Partnering with industry veteran Jim Sherry for Canadian distribution, Dias and Jansen designed the rollout themselves, tapping into the Scarborough community, local businesses, social media buzz and event-style screenings. The film played at a dozen Cineplex locations, earning over $100,000 in 10 weeks — the highest-grossing homegrown release of that period.
“We’ve seen so many Canadian movies in the last decade that get big attention at TIFF and the Canadian Screen Awards, but when they hit theatres, they’re empty,” says Dias.
“I don’t believe people don’t want to see these films. They’re just not given a good chance,” adds Jansen.
That conviction ultimately led the pair to launch Big Picture, a filmmaker-run distribution and marketing company aimed at shorter licensing terms, fairer revenue splits and greater transparency.
Rather than operating as a traditional distribution “factory,” they plan to focus on one project at a time, building releases around community engagement, event-style screenings and hands-on marketing.
Big Picture’s official debut will come overseas. The BBC and iPlayer have acquired U.K. linear and streaming rights to “Morningside,” slated for release on April 1, with a potential theatrical run. Big Picture is now looking to work with filmmakers in Canada and abroad with distinctive voices.
Diaz and Jansen say “Bria Mack Gets a Life” is just one example of a bigger problem facing Canadian indie projects. It’s not that people don’t want to watch them — it’s that no one’s putting real thought into how they’re marketed or who they’re meant to reach.
“You can’t tell me it’s only Suzy from Saskatchewan who consumes TV and films,” Jansen says.
For them, the goal isn’t to replace Canada’s existing system, but to prove there’s another way forward.
“The audiences are there and they’re willing to go see your work. They’re just not being reached in the right way,” says Dias.
“I really do believe that if you build it, they will come.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 23, 2025.
Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press
