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Mubi, once a streaming service with a small cinema programme, has become one of the most active theatrical acquirers in the independent market. The Substance made it profitable. What it does next is the question.
The 2025 Sundance Film Festival acquisitions market cleared more titles than any edition since 2022, but at substantially lower average price points. The buyers are active. The cheques are smaller.
Andrea Arnold's fifth feature split the reviews, and the split was real. The retrospective argument is that the film's unexpected magical turn is not a failure of the social-realist grammar, it's what the grammar was always walking toward.