{"id":124039,"date":"2023-12-20T14:59:56","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T19:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/?p=124039"},"modified":"2023-12-21T10:51:39","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T15:51:39","slug":"xtr-documentary-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/124039-xtr-documentary-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"XTR is Trying to Solve the Crisis in Documentary Film, but Some Filmmakers Feel Betrayed"},"content":{"rendered":"

On November 15, at a DOC NYC panel called \u201cBalancing Storytelling and Financial Stability,\u201d South African filmmaker Milisuthando Bongela, director of the acclaimed 2023 Sundance film Milisuthando<\/em><\/a>, recounted her unfortunate story of funding gone wrong\u2014and how powerhouse nonfiction studio XTR offered her production hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money last November to help her deliver her documentary for its Sundance premiere, and then, five weeks later and after repeated attempts to follow up, the company responded that they were withdrawing the offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen she told this story, I was shocked,\u201d says prominent Oscar-winning documentary producer and Story Syndicate CEO Dan Cogan, who was moderating the panel. \u201cI’ve seen behavior like this before from equity investors, but never from philanthropists. The whole culture of non-profit grantmaking runs against any kind of false promises,\u201d he continues. \u201cIt was heartbreaking to hear.”<\/p>\n

And Bongela is not alone. Over the last couple years, more than a half-dozen filmmakers have confirmed similar incidents of XTR pledging\u2014and then reneging\u2014on large grants, reducing the size of suggested funding amounts, or backtracking on other promises of support.<\/p>\n

Since its founding in 2019, XTR has aggressively supported dozens of nonfiction projects, including celebrated Sundance docs such as The Fight<\/em>, Bring Your Own Brigade, <\/em>and The Territory<\/em>, auteur-driven films such as the Ross brothers\u2019 Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets<\/em>, Jessica Beshir\u2019s Spirit Award winner Faya Dayi<\/em> and Jessica Kingdon\u2019s Oscar-nominated Ascension<\/em>, as well as more recently, the Apple+ docu-series They Call Me Magic<\/em>. In addition to providing equity financing, XTR also provides non-recoupable investment or works with different foundations and non-profit partners to find filmmakers grants, which Bongela and others found themselves chasing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want people to know who they\u2019re dealing with,\u201d says Bongela, who had been reluctant to speak publicly out of a sense of shame and fear of reprisals. \u201cUltimately, they may be more powerful and have more money, but this is not okay, and they can\u2019t continue to do this to other filmmakers. It\u2019s just cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n

In August 2022, Bongela had an initial positive meeting with XTR\u2019s then head of film Kathryn Everett. On November 16, after the film was selected for Sundance\u2019s World Cinema Documentary Competition, Bongela, her producer Marion Isaacs, and one of her executive producers, Multitude Films VP Anya Rous, participated in a Zoom meeting with Everett. \u201cThey offered us a full grant, not equity, because she said films like this should not have to pay equity back,\u201d says Bongela. With a financing gap of $360,000, due to costs associated with music licensing, archival footage, graphic design and deferred fees for the editor, producer, and director, Bongela recalls that Everett suggested rounding up the grant to $400,000. \u201cI remember bursting into tears,\u201d says Bongela. \u201cOn one hand, I felt a little ashamed that I was breaking professional boundaries and crying in front of this white American executive, and on the other, I was completely relieved.\u201d<\/p>\n

While waiting for the final proposal, Bongela and her team moved forward with certain financial commitments such as paying for archival licensing necessary to screen the film at Sundance. But weeks went by, and they didn\u2019t receive further communication from XTR. On Dec. 20, Bongela wrote an email to Everett: \u201cAre you still planning to send us the proposal?\u201d she wrote. \u201cWe were under the impression that the grant was a done deal from our last call. Did I misunderstand?\u201d<\/p>\n

Later that same day, Everett wrote back in an email, \u201cNo, you didn\u2019t misunderstand.\u201d She explained that a donor who \u201chad expressed soft interest in supporting your film decided not to give any grant support this year due to their own financial issues,\u201d she continued. \u201cSadly, this situation is not specific to your film \u2014 the donors are passing on ALL the Sundance grants, so even though I know it feels deeply personal, it is not a reflection on you all, your beautiful film, or its worth or value.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a phone call with Everett about the situation this month, she contended that nothing was ever promised in writing. \u201cIt was unfortunate that I could not find donors for those projects, but I did the best that I could,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd even if I did promise an exact amount, is it then my fault that they spent the money before I sent them an email confirming it? To me, it is a failure on the part of the producers on those teams, not an issue for the potential financiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multitude Films president Jess Devaney, an executive producer on Milisuthando<\/em>, argues that XTR\u2019s \u201cverbal funding commitment was sufficiently worded that\u2014as someone who has managed many millions of dollars in philanthropic funding over the years\u2014I was shocked when they went back on their word,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is irresponsible to name a specific, significant amount if you aren’t sure you can follow through, especially when working with early career filmmakers,\u201d continues Devaney. \u201cWhile it’s a producer’s responsibility not to spend money they don’t have, it’s a funder’s responsibility to recognize their positional power and the vulnerability of filmmakers when they fail to keep commitments.”<\/p>\n

XTR executives suggest these cases are not the rule, but the exception, and point to their overall generosity to documentary filmmakers since the company\u2019s founding, having doled out well over 20 grants with average sizes of $225,000 totaling approximately $7.5 million over the last few years.<\/p>\n

Indeed, some producers stand by the company, saying they had good dealings with XTR. Producer Riel\u00a0Roch Decter, co-president of MEMORY, says he had \u201ca great experience\u201d and feels \u201cfortunate that they got behind\u201d their project, a documentary this year called Carpet Cowboys<\/em>. Jay Van Hoy, producer on Liza Mandelup\u2019s Caterpillar<\/em>, says the company\u2019s initial financing was pivotal for raising additional funding for the project, with \u201cgood follow-through \u2026 helping with management on post and promotions.\u201d Similarly, producer Ines Hofmann Kanna speaks positively about their ongoing work together on Sonia Kennebeck\u2019s 2021 doc Reality Winner<\/em>, from fundraising for post-production to a L.A. theatrical premiere this October hosted by XTR Founder and CEO Bryn Mooser and actor Rosie O\u2019Donnell.<\/p>\n

During a recent phone call, Bryn Mooser acknowledged that the documentary marketplace has dramatically shifted over the last 18 months, which had affected their ability to find grant money.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were hit with two things,\u201d he said. \u201cStreamers pulled back on buying, so there were fewer sales, and then former granters who did not need returns were now seeing their films not even get distribution or audiences, so they were really disappointed.\u201d Additionally, people in the philanthropic community took their own financial hits, according to Mooser, so that impacted their donor base.<\/p>\n

Both Mooser and Everett also suggest the kinds of Sundance-bound personal-essay docs that they had been pursuing\u2014and that XTR\u2019s late investor Tony Hsieh<\/a> wanted to support before his death in late 2020\u2014became \u201charder to thread the needle for donors,\u201d said Everett, who has since left her fulltime position at the company, but continues to support XTR projects as a producer.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if we love a film, we\u2019re going to try to help the filmmakers,\u201d said Mooser. \u201cYou can call us overly enthusiastic\u2014I think that\u2019s fair. But I think we\u2019re more careful and thoughtful now about the fact that it\u2019s much harder to find grants right now, and that\u2019s a bummer.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, filmmakers have complained of fickle commitments from XTR dating back further. In the first years of the company, two other filmmakers said the company made good on financing their documentaries\u2014”which really helped save the film at a time when no one else was giving us money,\u201d says one director\u2014but that Mooser also \u201cmade a lot of other promises that he didn\u2019t follow through on,\u201d such as offers to provide marketing support and awards campaigns that never materialized.<\/p>\n

One producer, who received an equity investment from XTR during its first year, was surprised by the company\u2019s level of capital and the number of films it was funding, likening it to a start-up tech company. \u201cIn the tech world, there\u2019s this \u2018move fast, break things\u2019 culture, but it just doesn\u2019t translate to documentary\u2014it\u2019s not like you make a thing, copy it, and deliver it,\u201d they say. With their documentary, which didn\u2019t get into Sundance, \u201cit felt like that we had developed a prototype that didn\u2019t show promise, and then it was like \u2018next!\u2019 onto the next film,\u201d they continue. \u201cBut when you\u2019re dealing with stories and people\u2019s lives, that\u2019s not an appropriate way to handle it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A different documentary director recounts a period in 2022 of engaging with XTR for over six months about a potential grant for their project. In March, XTR executives wrote an email saying, \u201cWe are very interested in the project…. We should be able to follow up soon about next steps for a grant.\u201d The filmmakers continued to follow up and received another encouraging email in April (\u201cWe remain very interested in the project\u2026We look forward to continuing the conversation and happy to get on a call slightly closer to talk more\u201d), and then in August (\u201cSo nice to hear from you as always. I’m out of the office for the next couple weeks so would love to connect about this in September\u201d). And then they were ghosted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s been difficult enough trying to make a film as a first-time, brown, female filmmaker,\u201d says the director, \u201cand to have things dangled in front of my face and never followed through on is depleting my energy, and it\u2019s beyond inconsiderate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mooser argues that the length of time that they took trying to fund the project showed their dedication to it. \u201cWe see it differently,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe there was a miscommunication, but we actually tried for six months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some filmmakers call this kind of behavior common in the entertainment industry. One producer-director who in initial conversations thought he might receive a larger equity investment, which later turned into a smaller grant, says, \u201cI hear all the time financiers saying things like, \u2018This sounds great\u2019 or \u2018This should be possible,\u2019 but I don\u2019t consider anything a done deal until the money is in my account.\u201d<\/p>\n

But others in the nonfiction industry remain critical. One documentary executive familiar with the cases here responds, \u201cpromising grants to filmmakers and then retracting them is not standard business practice. And these were often very big grants, which were game changing to those films, so filmmakers found themselves in huge financial deficits that they were unable to come back from. And by doing that, you’re also preventing filmmakers from pursuing other funding at crucial moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, some filmmakers complained that XTR\u2019s waffling cost them. When another Sundance-bound film was verbally promised an XTR grant of $200,000, another potential funder backed out, says the producer, \u201cbecause there was a presumption that XTR were EPs, so we lost opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet another director says that with their Sundance acceptance, \u201cit would not have been difficult to apply for further grants to IDFA or Hot Docs, but when [XTR] came in, I stopped pursuing other grants, because I already had the money. It\u2019s also stressful and anxiety inducing,\u201d adds the filmmaker, about the time it took to confirm the funds, \u201cand robs us of our own focus time to invest in our work.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those filmmakers racing to complete their films after a coveted Sundance acceptance, it\u2019s always stressful. Frequently, it\u2019s also when last-money-in investors jump on a project that has the stamp of approval of a Sundance berth, so filmmakers are often negotiating quickly with many funders in the short window between Sundance notification and DCP delivery to the festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a shitty thing to do anytime, but it\u2019s a particularly intense and vulnerable time for anybody that gets into Sundance,\u201d says one of the aforementioned producers. Regarding their dealings with XTR, they say, \u201cIt feels like hitting people when they\u2019re at their most vulnerable, enticing them with money and discarding them. It really makes me appreciate the funders who come in early and develop a project from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

A third producer with a project at Sundance 2023, who was also in talks with XTR last year, said the company\u2019s abrupt backtracking on a funding promise \u201cfelt like a violation of our values and a fuck-you to independent filmmakers who thought they would get their films at Sundance without scrambling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of those affected also point to the fact that XTR\u2019s practices were particularly difficult for them as first-time and documentary filmmakers of color. As Firelight Media president and co-founder Marcia Smith recently said during a virtual panel<\/a> more generally about the industry called \u201cBeyond Resilience: The Documentary System is Broken. Now What?\u201d, \u201cfilmmakers of color pay the most for the lack of transparency in the industry\u2026 and routinely face a level of precarity that the most resourced parts of our field experience only in times of crisis\u2014like now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mooser, however, who counts among his mentors such tech investors as Elon Musk and Jason Calacanis<\/a>, strongly believes that he can \u201cbe part of the solution\u201d for documentary filmmakers. Recently, XTR closed a new round of investment to build out its Documentary+ ad-supported platform, which Mooser sees as an important new outlet to answer the challenges in nonfiction distribution. Unlike independent SVOD streaming sites such as Mubi or Criterion, Documentary+ is seeing initial success, according to Mooser, through free ad-supported AVOD and FAST TV streaming services.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really want Documentary+ to succeed,\u201d says a producer who didn\u2019t realize their documentary was on the platform, \u201cbecause the state of independent documentary film is in dire straits right now and it would be a shame if the company was not successful through mismanagement, or some other reason, and it\u2019s seen as evidence of independent documentary industry not working.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if Documentary+ is going to help solve the crisis, or other new funding and distribution strategies emerge to salvage the fragile independent documentary marketplace, it may have to come with more transparency and open communication, particularly during this high-stakes period when the entire nonfiction ecosystem\u2014companies and filmmakers alike\u2014is struggling to survive.<\/p>\n

As Milisuthando wrote to XTR\u2019s Everett in May of this year, \u201cRelationships matter in both of our jobs. As does trust\u2026. In this regard, please can I ask you \u2014 knowing how much we as filmmakers need funders and how you as funders need filmmakers \u2014 to please be more careful with people’s stories, people’s work, and people’s lives in your position of power.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On November 15, at a DOC NYC panel called \u201cBalancing Storytelling and Financial Stability,\u201d South African filmmaker Milisuthando Bongela, director of the acclaimed 2023 Sundance film Milisuthando, recounted her unfortunate story of funding gone wrong\u2014and how powerhouse nonfiction studio XTR offered her production hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant money last November to help her deliver her documentary for its Sundance premiere, and then, five weeks later and after repeated attempts to follow up, the company responded that they were withdrawing the offer. \u201cWhen she told this story, I was shocked,\u201d says prominent Oscar-winning documentary producer and Story Syndicate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":118801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_column":0},"categories":[4,9284],"tags":[24673,87,23778,24672],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124039"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124054,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124039\/revisions\/124054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}