Kino Lorber President Sees More Arthouse Opportunity as Big Streamers Go Mainstream

Whether it’s the Laemmles in Los Angeles, the Angelika in New York, or any of the arthouse theaters in between, Kino Lorber has become a mainstay of international cinema in the U.S. But for president Ed Carroll, there’s a mission to expand that reputation to streaming.

Initially joining the indie distributor as chief strategy officer in 2023 after nearly a quarter century at AMC Networks, Carroll oversaw the acquisition of the streaming service MHz Choice, which offers a collection of top international TV dramas like the German noir series “Babylon Berlin” and the first series from Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio, “Exterior Night.”

Since then, he’s also overseen the expansion of Kino Lorber’s streaming platform, Kino Film Collection, which is available on Amazon.

Kino Lorber has a stake in the Oscars this Sunday, as it distributed “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” a nominee for Best Documentary Feature that tells the story of how Black jazz artists like Louis Armstrong were unwittingly used by the U.S. State Department to win over the support of Africans with performances on the colonized continent. While the jazz-fueled charm offensive was going on, a military coup carried out with the support of Belgium and the Eisenhower Administration successfully assassinated the first democratically elected president of Congo, Patrice Lumumba.

Kino Film Collection is also the streaming home of F.W. Murnau’s legendary 1922 silent film “Nosferatu,” which has found renewed interest after the critical and commercial success of Robert Eggers’ Oscar-nominated remake.

Carroll spoke with TheWrap’s Office With a View about why he remains optimistic about international cinema even as arthouses fight for attention in a changed entertainment landscape, and why this is a prime time for niche streaming services to expand their footprint with audiences.

When you joined Kino Lorber in 2023 as chief strategy officer, what were your top priorities?
It was clear when I arrived that Kino Lorber had the key ingredients that are hard to invent. They had a great reputation, a strong brand and a long history as cinematic tastemakers. They also had a pretty abundant library of high-quality arthouse films. And then with Richard Lorber, they had a founder who continues to be adventurous.

When I first had lunch with him, I said, “Richard, you know, I’d love for the company to expand to accelerate its expansion into digital,” and he was immediately up for that. Shortly after that, we did the acquisition for MHz Choice and, you know, we’ve been rolling since then. 

What does Kino Lorber’s core viewership look like, and what strategy did you develop to engage with them?
I think there’s more than one answer to that question. On the theatrical side, we are aggressively in the space. We release about 30 films a year, about half of them being new releases and the other half repertory. We’ve had a lot of good fortune recently with back-to-back Oscar nominations for best documentary, but we’re attracted to less conventional types of storytelling and try to find the audience that will appreciate those stories.

It’s a tough business to be in, so it matters to have longstanding relationships with exhibitors and a reputation for knowing how to distribute specialized films in a way that connects with an audience, and that has a lot to do with exhibitor outreach, and knowing the community, working with the press, targeting digital advertising, all of that. The audience that we are targeting, it tends to be led by the film.

On the streaming side, I think we view it a bit differently. If we step back, the media is now dominated by large companies that are getting even bigger, and that causes them to move toward the mainstream programming with broadest appeal. That has made available what we call target formats, where we feel we can serve audiences that are in consistent, well-defined niches. These are people who subscribe to BritBox or The Criterion Collection or our Kino Film Collection. Those would be examples of niches that were once being served by the mainstream streamers, but now that’s not where their bread is buttered.

So for us, last year, we merged two platforms, MHz Choice and Topic into one service that provides high quality international series from France, Germany, Italy, the Nordics and other countries. We’ve built up a reputation for consistent quality and finding new titles that our viewers are open to trying because our platform has become such a reliable source of programming for them.

What led to the acquisition of MHz Choice? Why did you feel that was so important for Kino Lorber’s growth?
With Kino Lorber, we already had a company with a reputation for high quality international films; and we thought that if we expand it into high quality international TV series, that would be a point of differentiation for the company, But just as importantly, we thought this was an audience target of significant size that we could grow and and it was likely underserved in the streaming area. 

So there was a guy named Frederick Thomas, who was the founder of MHz Choice. I knew him a bit from my time at AMC Networks, where I was building targeted streaming services like Shudder and Sundance Now, and I liked what Fred was quietly building. So when I left AMC and came to Kino, I gave Fred a call and said, “If we put MHz together with Kino Lorber, it may provide the basis for faster growth for both of us.” We moved pretty quickly from that, and Richard was enthusiastic from the start.

With a few exceptions, the specialty box office has substantially declined since the COVID shutdown. How has Kino Lorber adjusted to that?
There’s no question that the challenges in the market mean that you have to be careful. You don’t want to get out over your skis. Every film is its own unique challenge, and that’s part of the fun of it. But it is more important than ever that we identify the audience a film can connect to and how we can let those folks know about it. So we get into targeted digital advertising, we get into working with the exhibitors for community outreach, especially with films that have a lot of critical acclaim.

But while all that’s important, especially for our theatrical audience, that’s not enough. You also have to do something different, and that’s where the Kino Film Collection comes in. We thought it was the right time to release our own streaming product so we could go direct to home in an environment where the large mainstream SVOD services that used to have a more abundant appetite for independent film or specialty film have stepped back. We got on the Amazon platform, we got on the Comcast platform, and will get on other platforms. The subscriber numbers are on a very healthy trajectory. 

So give us some film recs. What would you suggest that a newcomer to Kino Film Collection check out?
Well, the Kino Collection really shows the range of what we offer in theaters; so if you go on it right now, you will find “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary. You’ll find “Green Border,” which was on many top 10 lists last year, it’s a feature that was on many the top 10 list. But you’ll also find classics like “The Conformist” and “Swept Away,” and you’ll find breakouts of international current cinema, like “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.” So that’s an idea of what you’d find at any one time. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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