After five feature films and thirty-plus shorts, we kept asking the same question: why does a film play 19 festivals, win 16 awards, and still have no audience to show for it?
“Where can I watch your movie? We heard it after every screening. We never had a good answer.”
Sean Drummond and Chelsea Bo have spent over a decade making independent films, from small regional festivals to global sales festivals like SXSW and Tribeca. They never had a bidding war. What they had, over and over, was an audience walking out of a screening with nowhere to go.
We'd tell people to follow us on Instagram, but not everyone uses Instagram and the algorithm buries everything the moment you need it most. We'd point them to Letterboxd and IMDb — great for legitimacy, useless for building a real audience you can actually reach.
After every screening: no contact list. No data. No way to say we're playing Austin next month, or the film is streaming now. The festival had all that audience data. There was just no infrastructure to connect any of it back to the filmmakers.
“There should be a place to build an audience, not just a website that lives in the ether. A discoverable home that follows a film’s entire journey.”
No Right Way
Directed by Chelsea Bo
After all of that: no distribution offers. No lasting audience. Starting from scratch for the online release. This film was the lightbulb moment that led to Cindee.
The lightbulb moment.
The festival circuit had sent thousands of people into a room to watch our film. But when it was over, those people had no place to follow the journey forward. We needed to build that place. That became Cindee.
Right now, indie film audiences exist in silos. Someone who loves independent cinema has no way to know that the film they saw at one festival is playing three towns over, or that it’s now streaming. Cindee closes those gaps.
An audience member attends a screening at Cinequest and wants to tell their friends. They have no idea there are three other community screenings happening right now in the Bay Area.
Every screening is connected. Share the film, find the next showing near you.
An Austin local attends SXSW every year. They have no idea there's another amazing festival just three hours north of them: Lone Star Film Festival in Fort Worth.
Festivals are discoverable by genre, location, and vibe — not just by who already knows them.
Someone who missed the screening at Woodstock Film Festival loved the logline in the lineup. They don't realize the film is now streaming online, available right now.
A film's page follows it from festival world premiere to streaming, in one place.
The audience for independent film isn’t small. It’s massively under-served. According to the Indie Film Landscape report from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard, led by researcher Keri Putnam:
Current US audience
0.0MPeople who actively watch independent films in theaters or on small screens today. (Nielsen / Parrot Analytics / The Numbers, 2022–23)
Potential US audience
0MPeople who say they would pay for a channel dedicated to independent film and documentary. Nearly 1 in 5 American adults call themselves definite fans.
Untapped market
0MPeople who want to watch independent film but currently have no good place to find it. Cindee is built for them.
I wish there was a consolidated place to find festival films and independent movies that aren’t on Netflix.
Source: Indie Film Landscape Report, Shorenstein Center at Harvard, researcher Keri Putnam. National survey conducted winter 2024 with Evan Shapiro and Publisher’s Clearing House Insights; data from Nielsen, Parrot Analytics, and The Numbers.
Not just a streaming platform. Not just ticketing software. A place where filmmakers can build, engage, and monetize audiences directly — before, during, and after the festival circuit.
Festivals hold all the audience data. So we built the ticketing infrastructure too, putting that data to work for the filmmakers showing there.
Rent or sell your film directly to your audience, with the smallest take rate in the industry. No aggregators. No middlemen. Revenue that actually reaches the filmmakers.
Every screening becomes a touchpoint. Every audience member a potential lifetime fan who can find you when the film moves online.
A searchable, discoverable home for independent film organized around the festivals, filmmakers, and stories audiences actually care about.
Audiences can tip filmmakers directly. Your support goes where your attention goes, not into a platform's operating margin.
Real-time dashboards and transparent weekly payouts. For the first time, filmmakers actually know who their audience is and where they came from.
For filmmakers & creators
Build a profile that lives beyond any single festival. Upload your film, set your own price, connect directly with the people who showed up for your work. No withdrawal fees, no permission required.
For film festivals
Use Cindee to sell tickets and manage screenings while giving the filmmakers you select the tools to actually capitalize on the audience you bring them. The festival circuit becomes a launchpad, not a dead end.
For indie theaters
Manage ticketing and passes for in-person events with tools built for film, not concerts. Simple setup, transparent reporting, audience data that stays connected to the films you champion.
For film fans & attendees
Discover independent films playing near you and streaming now. Follow filmmakers you believe in. When you buy a ticket or rent a film on Cindee, your money goes directly to the people who made it.
Cindee exists to create a new independent film ecosystem that’s equitable, fair, and built around the people who make and love great films. We believe underrepresented voices deserve the same infrastructure that blockbusters take for granted. We’re building it.