AFM (American Film Market)

Where Independent Films Get Made

The American Film Market (AFM) is a uniquely business-centric event. Unlike its European counterparts in Cannes and Berlin, the AFM is a standalone market not attached to a major public film festival. Its focus is singular and intense: deal-making. For one week every autumn, producers, sales agents, and distributors from over 70 countries gather to buy and sell independent films of every genre and budget level.

The AFM is particularly crucial for the pre-sale financing model. This is where a producer or sales agent will come to the market with a package—typically consisting of a script, a director, and one or two lead actors—and sell the distribution rights for the unmade film to different distributors on a territory-by-territory basis. For example, a German distributor will buy the German rights, a Japanese distributor the Japanese rights, and so on. The producer then takes these signed distribution contracts to a bank as collateral to secure a loan that provides the cash to actually produce the movie. The AFM is the world’s most important hub for this type of financing.

The Hotel Market Experience

For many years, the AFM was famous for its unique structure, with the majority of business conducted within the suites of the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. Sales companies would convert entire floors of the hotel into temporary offices, holding back-to-back meetings and pitching their slates. This created a concentrated, high-energy environment for closing deals.

The market is especially known as a hotspot for commercial, star-driven genre films—action, thriller, and horror pictures are staples of the AFM. It serves as the last major sales opportunity of the year, where companies finalize their slates and secure distribution for films intended for release in the following year. While it showcases completed films, its primary identity is as the engine that finances and gives the green light to a huge portion of the world’s independent cinema.