50 Films: Let's Organize for the 2026 NonDē Film Movement
It's not personal, it's politics.
We are waiting for something.
But it’s not going to be hand-delivered to us by way of courier riding in on a vintage Vespa from stage right.
We know what Mark said… the cavalry and whatnot.
Power cedes nothing without a demand. (Frederick Douglass said that one.) So if we don’t demand that power be put back into the hands of the people, we will miss this moment.
I believe NonDē Filmmaking isn’t just a style of artistic practice.
I believe it’s a code and a politics.
It’s asking for something basic: let us live. Let us make the art we want to make and live a dignified life while making it. Let us afford the rent. Let us pay our collaborators. Let us reach past the tendrils of the algorithm and find our audiences without always having to pay to play, or capitulate to the powerful, or soak our souls under the hose of slop until they’re mutable and mushy.
Let us give something back to the people around us.
Let us make mistakes.
Let us whiff on a big swing. And then, let us feel safe enough to try again, to attempt our best work. This cultural moment demands our best work.
Art is where we turn when we can’t turn anywhere else. It’s the last stop before completely disconnecting from our human predicament.
We can’t turn away from our humanness. We can’t turn away from our predicament.
We must face it all— face it all with courage— face it all together.
Why is the NonDē Film Movement happening?
It’s unaffordable to be a working class or middle class artist1 in America.
If you don’t already have access to money or financing, making a movie is a seriously uphill financial battle.
Honestly, even if you do have access to money and financing, it’s still an uphill financial battle.
So this means the stories audiences see, the ones driving social conversation and impacting the culture, will mostly be made by increasingly monopolized systems, run or funded by billionaires with rigid and narrow agendas.
Naturally then, income inequality makes it impossible for certain stories to be told. Working artists can’t get the funds needed to tell them.
We can’t even conceive of the cultural genius we’re missing out on because of this lack of access.
It’s not that the cream doesn’t rise to the top, sometimes it does. But you know what always does?
The cash.
NonDē is a reaction of an independent class of artists who see the false promises of a system rigged to work in favor of the few.
It’s happening because it’s becoming impossible for artists to stay artists.
What’s the urgency? Why NonDē now?
NSPM-7. News & media run by billionaires. Tilly. Pick your headline.
The moment is upon us. You get it.
So what do NonDē Filmmakers do?
We take a page out of Corbin Trent’s book.
Recently, he wrote a piece called A Polite Society That Wasn’t and in it, he argued for would-be politicians to come together around
“a binding pledge and governing strategy built around these principles, with the polling data that proves it’s what voters across the spectrum actually want. It’s designed for candidates willing to commit in writing, organize as a bloc, and challenge the failed status quo in primaries if necessary.”
Applying this to NonDē, there are many things our movement will need to do. But in my opinion, one of its most urgent tasks is gathering the following pieces:
a bloc of filmmakers
2-3 NonDē principles
the data that prove audiences want NonDē films
What do you mean a bloc of NonDē Filmmakers?
I mean 50 filmmakers making 50 NonDē films in 2026.
I’ve seen 2, maybe 3, filmmakers helping each other out from time to time in a back-pat attaboy sort of one-for-you, one-for-me way, but 50? In a coordinated effort?
I have never seen that.
Forgive me if I’ve been living under the rock of parenthood for the past 7 years but I truly have never seen that.
We’d still make and release our films individually. But the coordinated effort would be putting them in context of the NonDē movement, sharing infrastructure best practices, developing data sets, and using our combined marketing power to promote the movement, not just the movie.
What do you mean NonDē principles?
TANGENT ALERT!
You know why universal healthcare is good politics? Because 62% of the US population wants it.
It cuts through party lines. It’s good for everyone. (It’s one of the things Americans actually consistently agree on, though the money-grifting talking heads and lobbyist-backed politicians would never admit it.)
END TANGENT!
It’s that sort of consensus-building principle that should be at the forefront of a NonDē cultural campaign.
In my mind, the NonDē first principles should address the most pressing needs of both working artists and audiences:
What do working artists need? INFRASTRUCTURE TO MAKE ART
What do audiences need? EASY ACCESS TO ART
Those principles require a bloc of dedicated filmmakers to build that infrastructure and flood the airwaves so we can break through to audiences and capture attention.
Why do we need data?
A lot of us are already on board with the NonDē Film Movement because our lived experiences have taught us all we need to know.
But most folks are not that tapped in. And most folks are going to need a bit of context.
Here are some possible objections to participating in or watching movies from the NonDē Film Movement:
If you were making good movies, wouldn’t someone want to fund them?
You probably don’t know what you’re doing because you don’t have [insert specific knowledge or access].
Audiences aren’t going to pay attention to small movies.
If it’s not on Netflix, I have no idea how to watch it.
Just start as a production assistant and work your way up if you want to break in.
What you want to do doesn’t sound new, it just sounds like you’re not part of the industry.
Part of responding to these objections is telling the full story.
For example, as a breastfeeding mom of a one-year old, “just starting as a production assistant” wasn’t an available option for me due to both financial reasons and practical caregiving reasons.
I could share that with someone and they might understand my reason, but they may not make the jump to realize those kinds of reasons kneecap a lot of people from the participating in the market, not just me!
Cultural anecdotes are the first step. Soon after, people need numbers to turn the anecdotal into the evidential.
If they object to NonDē with “audiences aren’t going to pay attention to small movies” then we need to preempt that conversation with the data showing how untrue that is.
As a side note, we also need not capitulate to the data sets built by the bean counters. Our data doesn’t need to rely only on box office numbers. Polling is important too.
The 2023 Public Opinion Poll showed:
76% of American adults said art and culture was important to them.
61% believed the government should fund and support the arts.
86% believe “arts and culture improve my community’s quality of life and livability.”
This is important information to have, and the more information we have, the more bullish we’ll be about what we’re doing.
(BTW Stephen Follows does rigorous work in the data-interpreting space and I highly recommend everyone on FilmStack subscribes for the receipts.)
But let’s be real. Is it truly possible for 50 FilmStackers to make 50 NonDē films in 2026? That seems improbable.
Organizing 50 filmmakers around 50 NonDē films in 2026 is a stretch. That’s true. So maybe it won’t happen, maybe we’ll fail.
But look!
We could fail to get 50 and get 10! That’s still a crack in the dam, which we could then further exploit in 2027.
We could come up with a really solid first draft of the infrastructure we need to eventually get to 50.
We could learn we don’t need 50 filmmakers to make a dent. We could find out we need a lot less to do a lot more.
But perhaps more importantly — here’s what could happen if we don’t try at all:
We could spend another year waiting for something to happen.
If you’re in, here’s what comes next:
I’m assuming we won’t get 50 filmmakers jumping in right away.
Can we get 8?
If you’re interested in doing this but not sure if you can, start by sharing this post with your own commentary on it to get a discussion started. I find talking with others always gives me the spark needed for a fire.
If you’re definitely IN IN IN and you want to make a NonDē film in 2026, leave a comment and let us know!
UPDATE: 100 films as of 1.17.26
While I started making the list and tagging folks on the bottom of this post, the ND50 Films Project has just grown way beyond FilmStack or even the post here that first called for it. So the entire list of filmmakers should be HERE. If you’re not in that doc, add yourself!
Thank you to everyone encouraging and growing this movement.
We can do this, together.
Tom Violett & Ray Violett
Makayla McIntosh & Cat Yudain
First Features (Eugene Mandelcorn)
Leave It Better (Graham Meriwether)
Behind the Slate (Aaron Strand)
corinne van der borch & Edwina White
The Cinema Mystique & Grace Porter
Join us and let’s get to 50 75!
I could also just delete the word artist here.
This is FANTASTIC what you are doing here Courtney. You can feel the wave rise. Hell, it's an entire continent. You are making the earth move!
Great challenge. Time to step up! Cant wait to see what projects emerge