Festivals reject 95% of submissions
And the entry fees come out of your pocket whether you get in or not. Even an acceptance rarely converts into distribution. Most laurels never translate into a single sale.
For independent filmmakers · Direct-to-audience
The festival run ends.
Your film shouldn’t.
Give your film a cinema of its own — its own address, its own checkout, its own audience. No more asking a festival, a marketplace or a distributor for permission to be seen. You pay nothing until someone buys a ticket.
- Nothing to pay until you sell
- You keep your rights
- Every buyer’s email is yours
No subscription to begin — sales are charged 15% + $0.50 per sale. Premium lowers it to 10% + $0.50 per sale.
yourfilm.tribushare.com
A SCREENING ROOM
built for one film. Yours.
ENCRYPTED STREAMING · TICKETED ACCESS · STRIPE PAYOUTS · YOUR DOMAIN
00:01:00 — The Problem
Finishing a film is hard.
Releasing it is harder.
Independent filmmakers face the same four walls. Festivals, marketplaces, distributors, custom builds — every option costs you money, audience, or control. Often all three. Here’s what nobody told you in film school.
Distributors take 30–50% and lock your rights
You sign a 7-year deal to access an audience you’ll never see, on a platform that decides your pricing, your release window, and whether your film stays online next quarter.
Uploading is not distribution
A free public upload has no film checkout — and platform storefronts keep the buyer relationship. You get views, not an email list you own, and no clean path to sell the next film to the people who loved the last one.
Building a site takes months you don’t have
Hosting, payments, geo-restrictions, encrypted streaming, key management, fraud, taxes. You went to film school to direct — not to debug a Stripe webhook at 2am.
00:02:00 — The Shift
Stop renting your audience.
Start owning the relationship.
TribuShare gives you the infrastructure of a major platform, without the middleman, the lock-in, or the data tax.
The platform model
What you give up today
- Audience captured by the platform
- 30–50% revenue share, opaque payouts
- Buyer data locked behind their dashboard
- Algorithm decides who discovers your work
- Multi-year rights agreements
- Your film alongside 10,000 others
The direct model
What you reclaim with TribuShare
- Emails, names, and preferences. Yours forever.
- Sell directly through Stripe with a transparent 15% + $0.50 per sale fee without a subscription or 10% + $0.50 per sale with Premium.
- Real-time analytics on every viewer
- You drive discovery: your channels, your terms
- No lock-in. Cancel anytime.
- A dedicated storefront. Only your film lives there.
00:03:00 — How it works
From master file to live storefront
without a line of code.
No developers. No design agency. No code. Tibu, our AI film assistant, turns your synopsis, script, or stills into a polished release page you edit and publish yourself.
STEP 0101
Upload & describe
Upload your master and tell Tibu about your film. Genre, themes, audience, mood. Drop in a script, press kit, or stills — anything that captures the work.
Your master + a synopsis
STEP 0202
Configure & refine
Choose your layout. Set your pricing (rental, purchase, or both). Connect Stripe. Add geo-rules and private access grants if you need them.
A Stripe account
STEP 0303
Launch & sell
Go live with one click. Share your storefront link. Watch sales, viewers, and traffic sources update in real time. Stripe pays you directly.
One click
00:04:00 — On air
Not mockups. Four filmmaker storefronts running today — three already selling.
Every screen below is a live storefront running on TribuShare today. Click one and you land on the filmmaker's own site — their domain, their checkout, their audience. One is a single documentary standing alone; the other three are one director's catalogue, run from a single library. The shape is yours to choose.
letmehavemyson.comOwn domain
Let Me Have My Son
2023 · DramaCristóbal Krusen · Messenger Films
One of 5 films in the same library
Sold alongside its companion documentary as a two-film bundle, with a book and screening details on the same site.
Rent $4.99 · 3 daysBuy $24.99 · 4K
Visit →thebonniebraehouse.comOwn domain
The Bonnie Brae House
2006 · DocumentaryBro. Steve Harris · Bro. Steve Enterprises
A single film, on its own
A guided tour of the only building still standing from the 1906 Azusa Street Revival, with bonus material behind the same checkout.
Rent $9.97 · 48 hoursBuy $17.97 · lifetime
Visit →final-solution.tribushare.com
Final Solution
2002 · DramaCristóbal Krusen · Messenger Films
One of 5 films in the same library
A twenty-year-old film that screened on SABC and PBS, back on sale on its own terms — cast, laurels and press notes included.
Rent $3.99 · 3 daysBuy $9.99 · with making-of
Visit →sabina-k.tribushare.com
Sabina K.
2015 · DramaCristóbal Krusen · Messenger Films
One of 5 films in the same library
A Bosnian love story with an international festival run, published as a full film page while its release window is being set.
Page live · release window still being setVisit →
00:05:00 — Meet Tibu
The crew goes home.
Tibu stays.
Every film gets a crew for the shoot. Almost none gets one for the release — that part you end up doing alone. Tibu is the department that never wrapped.
Design
Lays out the page and picks colors that look like the film.
Words
Turns your synopsis into what people read. You cut what you don’t like.
Pricing
Suggests what to charge to rent it, to buy it, to bundle it.
Translation
Puts the whole site into languages you don’t speak.
This crew built The Bonnie Brae House — the documentary two sections up. Selling since April.
00:05:30 — The objection
Yes, you could build
this yourself. Most of it.
A free public upload has no film checkout — tips and platform storefronts are a different product. On a public YouTube or free Vimeo upload there is no Rent $5 button — no paywall, no ticket, no buyer email you own. Everything below is detail next to that one sentence.
Fair enough — this part is genuinely yours to do
Buy a domain and point it somewhere. One afternoon.
Put the film on the internet for free. Ten minutes.
Design a page that looks good. A weekend, or a template.
Send the link to everyone you met at festivals. You already do.
The missing button
Rent $5Rent $5
One of those two takes a payment.
Getting from the left one to the right one is not a design job. It is a payments job, a security job, and a tax job — and it is the whole reason a free upload stays free.
What building it yourself actually means
- Hosting and bandwidth for a master measured in tens of gigabytes.
- An encoding ladder, so the same film plays on a phone on mobile data and on a 4K television.
- Encrypting the master and releasing decryption keys only to viewers holding a valid ticket. Without that, the file is a download waiting to happen.
- Checkout, refunds, failed cards, chargebacks, receipts.
- Sales tax and VAT in every country that buys a ticket.
- Shared passwords, resold links, accounts used by forty people.
- Then you maintain all of it, indefinitely, while making the next film.
Any one of these can break on the night four hundred people click at once. That is the one night it cannot.
Same audience, three routes.
1,000 people want to see your film, and you charge $12 to own it. Here is what each route leaves in your account.
Route 01 · Free public upload
Posted free, no paywall
- Gross
- No ticket sales
- Buyers
- No film checkout
- Emails collected
- Views, not your list
You keep
$0 from tickets
1,000 people watched. None bought a ticket — and their contact stayed on the platform, not in your CRM.
Route 02 · Traditional distributor
They take 30–50%
- Gross
- $12,000
- Their share (30–50%)
- −$3,600 to $6,000
- Emails collected
- Theirs, not yours
You keep
$6,000 – $8,400
Paid on their reporting schedule, under a term you signed years before the money arrives.
Route 03 · Direct on TribuShare
Your storefront, your checkout
- Gross
- $12,000
- TribuShare fee (10% + $0.50 per sale)
- −$1,700
- Release Pass (90 days)
- −$249
You keep
$10,051
Plus 1,000 email addresses that belong to you when the next film is ready.
Assumptions: 1,000 sales at $12, on a site with an active Release Pass. The fixed $0.50 per sale is 4.2% of a $12 ticket but 12.5% of a $4 one — on cheap tickets it is the part that matters, so price with it in mind. The same 1,000 sales without any subscription leave you $9,700 and cost nothing up front. 30–50% is the usual distributor range, not a quote from one. Stripe processing is separate: it is billed by Stripe, it is not TribuShare revenue, and it is not deducted in any column above.
00:07:00 — Pricing
Pay for the release you need, when you need it.
Publish and sell without a subscription. Premium lowers the sale fee to 10% + $0.50 per sale and connects your own domain, for 90 days or month to month.
Step 1 · Everyone starts here
Publish one film. Grow into a full catalog.
The same site holds every film you add, along with its checkout, streaming, and audience data. It works from day one; upgrade only when the lower fee and custom domain make sense.
Step 2 · Premium — one upgrade, two ways to pay
Premium changes exactly three things.
- Stream in 4K
- Use your own custom domain
- Your sale fee drops from 15% to 10% (the $0.50 per sale is unchanged)
Both options below give you those same three things. The only difference is how you pay for them.
90 days · one payment
Release Pass
$249for 90 days
A dated campaign — a premiere, a festival window, a push.
Paid once, ends on its own. 3 months of Monthly would cost $237, so the Pass is $12 more — in exchange there is nothing to cancel and nothing to forget.
Pays for itself at $4,980 of sales over the 90 days. Below that, staying without a subscription costs you less.
Monthly · renews
Monthly
$79per month
Open-ended sales — you don't know how long it will run.
Renews each month until you cancel. Best when the film keeps selling on a long tail and you want to stop whenever it slows down.
Pays for itself at $1,580 of sales per month. Below that, staying without a subscription costs you less.
Nothing is charged at signup. Premium is activated from your dashboard once your site exists, so you can build the whole thing before deciding.
When a Release Pass ends: the site stays online and keeps selling. The standard 15% + $0.50 per sale fee returns, and 4K streaming and the custom domain pause until you activate more Premium time.
Prices are USD, before tax. Stripe processing is separate. Every price is per site, not per film. Publish one film or build a full catalog on that site. See the full pricing story →
00:07:30 — Roadmap
Being built next.
Two things on the bench. Everything else on this site is what you can use today.
Next
Live Screenings
Your audience watches together, at the same moment, while you host the room and take their questions on camera.
See what it looks like →Next
Screeners
Watermarked, time-limited links for festivals, press and buyers — with the ability to see who watched and revoke access.
Join the early access list →Want to know the day these land?
One email when they ship — and nothing else in between. We don’t promise a date, because we don’t have one.
00:08:00 — Field notes
The state of independent distribution, written by filmmakers.
Launch
How to Launch a Vertical Series on Your Own Storefront
Launch a vertical series independently: hook episodes, paywall placement, season pass pricing, weekly cadence, and owned audience mechanics.
July 3, 2026·8 min read
Monetization
Micro Drama Economics: Who Actually Keeps the Money
Micro drama monetization is an $11B market and creators keep almost none of it. The real economics, and the ownership alternative.
June 29, 2026·8 min read
Monetization
How to Monetize a Web Series Without a Platform Deal
Monetize web series episodes directly: season pricing, episodic windows, premiere events, and owned audience. No platform deal required.
June 24, 2026·8 min read
00:99:00 — Last frame
Your film
deserves a release.
Begin without a subscription. Build your film's home, then activate Premium with a Release Pass or month to month when the audience is ready.