The New Letterboxd ‘Video Store’ Could Change the Game for Filmmakers

Last week, Letterboxd, the popular film-reviewing and logging app, announced Letterboxd Video Store, an in-app rental service. The services will offer users the opportunity to rent restored films, unreleased films, and, most notably, films from the festival circuit that have not yet found distributors for wider release. The new platform could help these titles get to more screens.

Steven Sung Hun Lee is a programmer with Fantasia International Film Festival, North America’s top genre festival. He has seen firsthand the power an early audience can have on buyers.

“The Undertone was one of those movies that got acquired by A24 based on its reception with the Fantasia crowd. It also won an audience award. Whenever a movie gets the best word of mouth, it always attracts these distributors and producers to start acquiring these films.”

He sees Letterboxd as a tool for building meaningful buzz around a movie.

“What I like about Letterboxd is how users interact with one another. They're like, ‘Wait, I’ve never heard of this movie before!’ You see what other people think; it's a great way to pique your curiosity. I think it provides a really good platform, especially for short filmmakers. They can get word of mouth going, get people talking on social media, and maybe even catch the eye of distributors.”

It's almost like going to a festival again. With its rental service, Letterboxd will let audiences discover films they might have missed, and that discovery can turn into real momentum for a movie.

Oftentimes, films can get lost in festival purgatory. Anderson .Paak’s directorial debut, K-Pops, a vibrant and marketable film about a father-son relationship set against the backdrop of a Korean singing competition series, took an unexpected nine months to find a distributor following its premiere at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival.

Lee, who attended the premiere, believes the film found more success at its subsequent Tribeca Film Festival screenings due to the festival having more of a musical DNA. “Not all festivals have the same audience,” he shares.

Letterboxd Video Store, set to launch in December, offers buyers direct access to ratings, popularity and even insights from users who will have rented these titles. If distributors are paying attention, the ingredients are already there: real viewers, real reactions, and the chance to acquire the next hit hiding in plain sight.