The filmmaking brothers behind Spencer and Jackie just launched a new streaming service designed to fix a massive problem in cinema. Pijama, their new VOD platform, launches today as a direct answer to what directors Juan de Dio and Pablo Larraín call a cultural crisis - eighty percent of independent films made each year never find distribution, vanishing from the festival circuit before audiences ever get to see them.
There's a brutal math to indie filmmaking. A director spends months making a film, it premieres at Sundance or Berlin or Cannes, critics praise it, and then... nothing. The film disappears. No distribution deal materializes. No theatrical run happens. No streaming offer comes. The audience that might have loved it will never know it existed. This happens to roughly eighty percent of festival films every single year, according to the new Pijama team.
Now the brothers trying to fix that are the same filmmakers who gave us Spencer (the Kristen Stewart portrait of Princess Diana in crisis) and Jackie (the audacious Kennedy political drama). Juan de Dio and Pablo Larraín launched Pijama today as a VOD platform built specifically for the films the traditional studio system leaves behind.
The pitch is clean and compelling. Filmmakers pay a flat one-hundred-dollar fee. Pijama handles hosting, encoding, and streaming for up to two years. Creators set their own rental prices between $3.99 and $9.99. Viewers get a 72-hour viewing window spread across thirty days. And here's the part that matters most: Pijama takes just 20 percent of revenue, sending 80 percent back to producers, sales agents, and distributors after transaction costs and taxes. That economics-first approach signals the Larraíns aren't trying to build a content empire - they're trying to build a distribution utility.
"Eighty percent of films never get distribution, and we see a cultural crisis rooted in the end of physical media and the current logic of the market," the brothers said in a statement. "We ask ourselves how audiences can see most of the films that played festivals like Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, and Toronto last year when, in most cases, it simply isn't possible." It's a problem born from technological obsolescence meeting market consolidation. Physical media died. Streaming services consolidated around major studios and franchises. Independent films, which once had a fighting chance through limited theatrical runs and DVD releases, found themselves trapped in a distribution purgatory.
The timing matters. Pijama lands just weeks after Letterboxd, the beloved film-rating platform, launched its own Video Store with a curated selection of independent and international cinema. Two platforms making nearly identical bets - that there's an audience hungry for films beyond the algorithmic recommendations of Netflix and Disney Plus - suggests we're watching the beginning of a real shift.
What makes Pijama different is that it's built by filmmakers for filmmakers. The platform gives creators real tools beyond just a distribution channel. Filmmakers can track viewing metrics and design targeted marketing campaigns to drive their own viewership. It's YouTube-for-indie-films, but with revenue sharing designed to actually benefit the creators rather than just the platform.
The interface is clean and cross-platform. The app launches today on iOS, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Android, meaning it hits the same living room screens where users already watch streaming content. That distribution advantage could be crucial. An undiscovered film sitting on a platform nobody knows about is still invisible. But an undiscovered film sitting on a platform with real device penetration and visibility? That stands a chance of being stumbled upon by the exact audience that would love it.
The indie film world has watched streaming consolidation with understandable anxiety. Netflix doesn't greenlight unknown directors. Amazon doesn't pick up obscure festival films. The major platforms are built on data-driven decisions about what audiences already know they want. What they don't do is take risks on unknown artists. Pijama and Letterboxd are betting that there's enough demand - and enough filmmakers getting squeezed out of the system - to sustain alternatives that work differently. If this experiment works, it could reshape how independent cinema reaches audiences. If it doesn't, well, at least someone tried.
Pijama represents a genuine shift in how independent films might reach audiences. By pairing filmmaker-friendly economics with real device penetration and platform visibility, the Larraíns are tackling not just distribution but the fundamental misalignment between what gets made and what gets seen. Whether this becomes a meaningful alternative or a niche platform for cinephiles remains to be seen. But for the eighty percent of festival films currently disappearing into the ether, it's at least a lifeline where none existed before.
