Close to one year before picture lock, Director Krisanna Sexton and Producer Dana Croschere started hosting screening events for their feature documentary, Rescued Hearts.
Their earliest screening featured a 20-min assembly cut of the film — a “Sneak Peek” as they called it — followed by a short presentation about a topic explored in their film, and a Q&A. It was free to attend with a suggested donation. In the lead up to the event, one friend who eventually became an executive producer offered a $20,000 matching gift. All told, they raised $64,000 from that first event.
They did it again — a few times, in a few different formats — raising over $160,000 from their audience before their world premiere. Filmmakers are commonly advised to start planning for distribution early but the Rescued Hearts team expanded my understanding of how early distribution itself can start.
The money, at a moment when Krisanna and Dana needed finishing funds, was a big benefit, but the early audience-building was invaluable. Incidentally, very little from that first 20-min cut is in the final feature but with it they were able to engineer demand for their finished film. Today, just over a year since its release, Rescued Hearts has crossed $700,000 in total fundraising and distribution revenue, all while building a passionate and ever expanding community.
Let’s get into what they did and what’s next. Covered below is:
How Rescued Hearts grew an audience from zero
Pre-release screening event formats, with revenue outcomes
Getting and turning down a $75,000 offer from a streamer
Revenue breakdown from grassroots screening events on Kinema
Their systems for processing and scaling screening event requests
13 mantras that kept Dana and Krisanna grounded in their distribution work
Kinema for Filmmakers is a newsletter about creative film distribution. This is a filmmaker case study.
November 2022: Began filming and sharing the journey on IG / FB
2023: Joined the Show&Tell Circle (distribution planning / execution cohort)
April 2024 - March 2025: “Sneak Preview” screening events
May 2025:
World premiere and festival run
Turned down a $75K streaming deal
Began licensing the first hour of the film for community screenings (Kinema)
June 2025: Began full-film in-person community screenings
December 2025: Two-day on-demand screening event of the film’s first hour (Kinema)
April 2026: 10-day on-demand screening event of the full film (Kinema)
Future:
Limited TVOD window, Aug 1-10, $15 rental, Pay What You Wish (Kinema)
Expand community screenings
Increase international access and translations
In November 2022, when the team began filming, Dana, the film’s producer, created film accounts on Instagram and Facebook. They started with zero followers, zero ‘background’ in marketing, and zero budget. “We didn’t really know what to do,” Dana said, “but we started sharing from the heart.” For Rescued Hearts, a feature documentary about healing with horses, Dana started posting stills of horses paired with personal stories, reels of BTS clips, and research pertaining to the horse-human connection.
Dana’s intuition was to take people on the journey with them. “The biggest thing we realized is if we don’t build a movement around the film before it’s done, who’s going to care enough to see it when it’s finished.”
Most of this social media work was done by Dana using just her phone. Her guiding philosophy was to “document in a way that would help people — not just horse people — but any person struggling with mental health or feeling like they don’t fit in anywhere.”
They would inform their audience of where they were in production and they let their fans know that they were accepting contributions. Thanks to that social media activity, an Instagram follower reached out with an $8,000 donation and eventually pledged another $5,000 as a sponsor. When they thought they were done filming, they received their biggest check, $50,000. Krisanna said, “asking people for money felt so uncomfortable. So I had to switch my mentality throughout this process to, ‘I’m not asking anyone for anything. I’m inviting them to join a journey that actually gives them purpose and they feel part of something bigger.’”
That invitation over time has led to 60,000 followers on IG and 40,000 on Facebook. One important enabler of this growth was their early screenings, which they started when they had just 1,000 followers.
Dana had conviction that they needed to share an early cut of their film ‘now,’ just over a year into posting on social media. The film’s director, Krisanna, was not immediately on board. “I was like, ‘What do I have to share? We just filmed with several people and there’s not really a story.’” She was also fearful — her list of fears included:
No one does this.
What if people think this is what the film is going to be?
What if people don’t resonate with what I’m creating now?
What if people think this is the film and then they never see the full film?
Dana was steadfast. She didn’t prescribe what the edit should be, only that it needed to touch people’s hearts.
Their two main goals were:
Money (covering production and travel expenses)
Providing value to the community they were slowly growing (1,000 followers on IG at the time)
While meditating, Krisanna had a vision for an edit that could carry real emotional weight without forcing her to map out the entire feature. She edited interviews from a few key subjects, weaving together the most powerful moments with engaging B-roll.
Though much of that initial cut didn’t survive into the final feature, it was a moving short film in its own right. Watching the 20-minute piece brought Krisanna to tears. “That’s my tuning fork,” she said. “That’s how I know something is working.” Once shared, so many others were moved to tears as well, adding to the excitement of what this film could become.
Their pre-release campaign was a series of live, interactive, virtual events. Depending on where they were in production, these events took different formats — sometimes featuring a 20-minute “Sneak Peek,” OR a standalone scene, OR a trailer drop, OR a focused panel discussion.
Their virtual events were around 90 minutes long and included:
Introductions & Meditations: Sometimes Dana would say, “I think we need a meditation video with beautiful shots of horses,” so they’d open with that, “grounding everyone and creating a beautiful energy for the event.”
Sneak Previews / Strategy Screenings: These 20-min assembly cuts were not rough; they had color correction, audio mastering, and licensed music to help the audience immerse themselves in what was being shared.
Presentation: “Dana and I would create these beautiful slides with what we’re doing, what we’re seeing, and what people are emailing us. We were giving them so much value even though the event was free. Our energy was really big.”
Q&A with Special Guests:
A heart-coherence expert: Exploring the science behind connection with horses.
Film participants: Key subjects who shared their personal journeys from the documentary.
Musical artists: The film’s composer and the singer/songwriter behind the film’s anthem.
They hosted several of these virtual community events, timing their screenings with consideration for future festival eligibility.
For Dana and Krisanna, the numbers were secondary to the impact. “Our true success was in building community,” Krisanna shared. “And that only happened because of how deeply we care — about this film, about everyone we filmed with, and about our audience.” Viewers saw themselves in the stories being told, transitioning from passive followers to active ambassadors and fueling word-of-mouth. Both their social channels and their email list surged.
They attribute the rapid growth to three core principles:
Inviting people who resonate: Reaching out from a place of service to those who needed the story, without having to “market” or convince.
Providing space for real connection: Giving attendees an opportunity to learn, heal, and grow together in a communal setting.
Collaborating with aligned hearts: Sharing audiences with film subjects and experts who cared just as deeply about the movement.
The power of invitation started locally when a horse sanctuary sponsored their first Sneak Peek for $1,000. “That got us rolling,” Dana recalled. Later, a friend, who was witnessing the excited response, offered a $20,000 matching gift. (That friend eventually became one of their executive producers.) They used that match to invite others in, and after hosting a powerful 90-minute virtual community event, they generated over $64,000 from their very first fundraiser.
Larger contributions came in once donors saw the growing impact and momentum. In the months that followed, Dana and Krisanna nurtured that community in new ways. “We put out the call for people to host screenings when the film wasn’t even done, and people immediately signed up,” Krisanna shared. “We didn’t have to convince anyone. They knew they believed in the message of the film without ever seeing it.”
What started as intimate virtual community gatherings of 100 people quickly expanded to over 1,000. “Our Zoom call where we were going to share our newly finished trailer had 1,500 people registered from 55 countries,” Dana recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh my…how on earth did we reach 55 countries?’”
Below is a snapshot of some of those pre-release strategy screenings and the value they generated for Rescued Hearts.
The early revenue is what draws attention but financial success wasn’t the only value created. They were movement-building, and community was at the center of their every decision. What can’t be put neatly in a table is the visceral sense of urgency their audience expressed through emails and comments on social media. One fan messaged them:
“Our audience knew I was deep in editing mode, working 10 to 15 hours a day to complete our film’s edit in 6 months,” Krisanna shared. “Those words, ‘Please hurry,’ became my mantra. Not that I wanted to rush anything, but because I felt like somehow the film was a part of something much larger — like an important energy was coming through that the world really needed.”
Rescued Hearts had its world premiere at the ILLUMINATE Film Festival in Santa Barbara. Dana and Krisanna focused only on festivals that felt like a genuine fit and chose ILLUMINATE specifically for its reputation in conscious cinema. The festival naturally attracts an audience of people on healing journeys, making it the perfect venue to test the appeal of Rescued Hearts beyond the “horse world.”
Their audience hunch was right on. “It was the only sold-out screening that year,” Krisanna shared, “and the longest standing ovation in the history of the festival.”
Around the same time, they had a $75,000 offer on the table from a streamer asking for 18 months of exclusivity. Krisanna noted, “Our advisors emphasized just how rare an offer like that was at the time.”
Yet Dana and Krisanna said ‘No.’
Two red flags:
The streamer wanted to turn the film into a four-part series.
The streamer wanted it immediately, before any community screenings.
As a film team they came back to their original purpose and the choice was simple.
“Having a grassroots screening campaign felt way more aligned,” Krisanna said, “because part of our mission in sharing the film was to raise awareness for organizations facilitating connection between humans and horses.”
In the end, Rescued Hearts was accepted into 6 of the 18 festivals they had intentionally selected — and sponsors funded their attendance for 5 of them.
“We knew film festivals were only a small piece of our release, but we wanted to prioritize enough of them to build the film’s reputation,” Krisanna shared. “We didn’t let ourselves get too discouraged by festival rejections knowing we already had an excited audience waiting — and thankfully we didn’t need festivals to find them.”
Alongside their festival run, Dana and Krisanna launched a community screening window just one month after their ILLUMINATE premiere.
For the first year, Dana and Krisanna prioritized in-person connection, traveling to attend over 50 community screenings and festivals themselves.
To protect their festival eligibility while still building grassroots momentum, they set a deliberate strategy:
The full feature film was only screened at events where Dana or Krisanna were physically present.
For all other independent hosts, they allowed screenings of the film’s first hour.
“Our film is a deep dive into the heart, and I wanted to honor our film and each person in it,” Krisanna said. “I knew for me to feel comfortable with the film being shared without us, I needed to attend events in person first and learn how to best empower our hosts.”
That strategy created a ripple effect wherein new screening hosts are born at each screening event. When their core festival run wrapped in May 2026, they allowed independent hosts access to the full feature for in-person screenings. Now local communities, organizations, and individuals are all empowered to share Rescued Hearts worldwide.
To date, Rescued Hearts has generated $700,000+ in total fundraising and revenue, used for production, post, and distribution expenses. The team has also fielded 400+ screening requests for the full feature.
This overall sum was generated across multiple revenue streams:
Donations and sponsorships
Film licensing and appearance fees
Ticket sales (filmmaker-hosted events and 50/50 theater splits)
Merchandise
For their Kinema window specifically, the revenue breaks down as follows:
First-Hour screenings (beginning Summer 2025)
33 in-person events
$23,000 in revenue
Every host who shared the first hour has wanted to share the full film
2-day First-Hour virtual screening (Winter 2026)
$10,490 in revenue
This was the first Rescued Hearts virtual event on Kinema. It served as a mini-test.
10-day worldwide full-film virtual screening on Kinema (Spring 2026)
$15 ticket price
8,378 tickets sold
~$123,000 in total sales
~$107,000 paid out to the film team
~$3,600 in Stripe payment transaction fees
~$12,300 (10%) to Kinema for platform operations
7 translations
Offered 50% off for anyone who needed it
Provided 100+ comp codes
Tested their first social ads with a $350 spend
Screening requests have come in daily since
Up next the team is planning their first TVOD window, limiting it to 10 days. The suggested rental price is $15, with Pay What You Wish and gifting turned on.
With screening requests pouring in from all over the world, Dana and Krisanna paid attention to what potential hosts were asking for. Many explicitly wanted the film to be translated. They shared this request in their community and a generous supporter stepped forward to fund the translations.
“I’m so proud to say we have 18 languages coming into our next Kinema window,” Krisanna said. She also offered a hot tip for filmmakers looking for quality translations on a budget. “After a ton of research, we used the human translators on Happy Scribe and were able to secure all translations for around $15K, which was amazing.”
Their success is underpinned by consistent action and pure heart. By physically attending so many screenings, Dana and Krisanna learned firsthand what makes a Rescued Hearts event unforgettable. Then, they systematically scaled that knowledge and their operation.
They documented every detail of the Before, During, and After screening process and put it into comprehensive host toolkits.
“It’s a deep dive, but I’ve organized it to be cleaner and cleaner over time, and our hosts really are grateful,” Krisanna shared.
Toolkits include:
Promotion guide
Hosting guide
Discussion guide
Film posters
Trailers and clips
Social graphics (stills and stories) and captions
Canva templates to create custom graphics
Templates (slides and email) to solicit event sponsors
Press kit and Press release
Many people think they can rock out ad-hoc until they reach some big number of screening events. In truth, having a strong operation early leads to excellent events, which is a large part of how you get to 400+ screening-event-requests and certainly how you can confidently process them. After some evolution, Dana and Krisanna’s operation now includes all-of-the-toolkits, Trello, and Kinema.
Direct people to their comprehensive Host a Screening page on the website. There are FAQs and a request form. “We take an active role in supporting them to help them do it so they don’t feel so overwhelmed.”
When ready, hosts will book a screening on Kinema. “In the beginning, we were only having people go to Kinema when they didn’t need a DCP but it was getting far too difficult to manage, especially when hosts are often unsure of what they will need. Now we have every event pay their licensing fee through Kinema, which has helped us scale how many events we can support.”
Dana gets an email from Kinema confirming a new screening and she creates a Trello card for that event. “As something’s booked, we build a Trello card, and add dates for tasks so we can keep track of everything.”
Example Trello card Kinema sends a confirmation email to the host. Dana sends a personal email to the screening host as well, thanking them and sharing the toolkits (which are also available in the host’s Kinema dashboard).
72 hours before their screening, Kinema sends an email and Dana sends an email as well. “We make sure they feel confident about the process and also proactively share the discussion guide to help them create a really beautiful experience with their community.”
On-going support of screening hosts and ticket buyers. “The thing we didn’t expect that turned out to be such a huge help is Kinema’s customer service team. Having real people behind the scenes to support our hosts and ticket buyers took a massive weight off our shoulders.”
Backup for DCP’s. “If a host working with a theater prefers to use a DCP, I always reach out early to confirm it’s downloaded and working. And if they run into any trouble, I feel so much better knowing Kinema is ready to go as a backup,” Krisanna shared.
The Rescued Hearts team has gone above and beyond to care for every single step of the host experience, and that extra-mile effort shows in their results.
As Dana noted, “Supporting people who want to share your film with their community takes extra effort, but it’s so worth it. We care about every event and every person in that audience. To us, that’s far better than taking a streaming deal and having no idea who’s on the other side of the screen.”
On the topic of work there is the physical labor of distribution (an ongoing to-do list), but there is also the mental game to manage (an ongoing battle with uncertainty). I’d be remiss if I didn’t end with Dana and Krisanna’s overall vibe, which I can only describe as wise big sister. They offered real talk and motivation in spades, specifically when it came to overcoming the mental blocks that so often stall independent distribution.
In keeping with their mission “to spread more love, hope, and healing in this world,” here are 13 pieces of wisdom that sustained them through their years on Rescued Hearts — several of which I later scribbled onto Post-it notes:
Everything is energy.
So many of my obstacles are between my ears.
You’re only going to be as successful as your passion for your project.
Worthiness is everything. If you don’t feel worthy of receiving a $50,000 check, you won’t.
Embrace the journey. If we only focused on the finish line, we would have never completed the film.
Be open to the miraculous.
Keep your intentions clear and slow down (advice from Keith Ochwat and Peter Broderick).
Our beliefs determine our reality.
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” — Wayne Dyer
Calm the noise.
Stop trying to copy anyone else — BE YOU.
True storytelling is an inner process. The inner creates the outer.
There are only two things in the world: fear and love. I want to choose love over and over and over.
Having mantras and practices to steady you when playing outside-of-the-distribution-sandbox help to remove your limiting beliefs. For Dana and Krisanna, in metabolizing their fears, they unearthed innovative screening event formats, a growing community, and an evolving distribution strategy that is an expression of their values.
On that note, I’d love to know what you do or say to get your head in the game (for life or work, film or otherwise). Do you have any favorite mantras or life mottos?
Pre-order “Rescued Hearts,” available for rent from August 1 - August 10 on Kinema or host a screening of the film. Note for rentals: you have 30 days to start watching and 48-hours to watch.
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