The HFF Field Guid to US cinema-centric PR Agencies & Publicists

The 2026 WIP edition is 50 agencies strong (and growing)!

I am going with what some of you may call “too early” with this post. I could continue onwards toward excellence and have all this information far closer to complete, but I am not going to do that. I have other things to write. Other information to share. Time is short. I think this is “good enough”. I hope it is the same for you. I suspect it will be.

You are applying to festivals now, right? Or you are prepping your release? You need to build your team. And although this list is not finished yet, it is good enough to use.

That said, if you’d like to help make it better for future users, please DM me and we can do that together.

Many of you have told me how helpful the different resources I’ve shared on this newsletter are. Whether it was 200+ financiers, 100+ distributors, 80+ distribution case studies, fiscal sponsors, 25+ for-hire distributors, or 25 theatrical bookers & strategists that moved you, thank you for the thanks.

Let’s do more of that, yeah?

—You do know though that you don’t need me to do it for you, right? We can do these together. Imagine if some of you invested a little time, labor, and researched and compiled similar lists. Substack tells me that I have readers in 175 countries now; imagine if someone in each of them created distributor lists for their territories. What a resource that would be for FilmStack!

It is a bit of serendipity in the newsletter world, when you have a post stacked, but know it needs something more. For me, that something more was answering the question of why — and here that is in the form of “why would I ever need a publicist?” I knew I needed to answer that, but I am a person of action. I want you to have this list., so I had this post stacked anyway without that critical point addressed.

But those gods of newsletters smiled down on me, or rather: on you... or maybe on “us”. Elliot Grove, ‘lo and behold, published that answer yesterday. Maybe you should go and read it before reading any further.

Do You Have Publicity, or Just a Film?

So now that you know why, the question becomes when or maybe what.

When it comes to film publicists, although you certainly can hire one team or agency and keep them all the way through, many films and filmmakers hire different entities for different part of the process. And it is not uncommon in the corporate film world to have multiple publicists — albeit possibly with different clients — all working on the same film.

So really the next question is when/where in the process are you hiring them?

Perhaps the process is something like:

1. Company/individual publicist

2. On Set/Production publicist

3. Festival Publicity

4. Awards Publicist

5. Impact Publicist/Strategist

6. Theatrical Campaign Publicist

7. Company/individual publicist

That said, I find that although they are always needed beneficial, I must caution that I often find that in this space I’ve been over-promised and under-delivered. And that’s true wherever I sat, be it with Amazon, or Good Machine, or true indie, whether I was a newbie, a rising producer, or a grizzled vet.

Honest conversations are needed as early as possible to set realistic expectations. Say what you want. Mean what you say. Listen to their perspective. Be clear and concise.

I do find that with publicity — like most things — everything works best when you can make their job easier for them. I know that when I tell people that, many feel “wait… you are saying I have to do their job for them?”. No, that’s not what I am saying. Find out how they like to work and work in that fashion. And let them know what you think a job well done is, too.

For years publicity function in a predictable fashion. The publicists were the folks who positioned you or your work with the major media outlets. But that was in the day when there actually were major media markets that covered film. Most of them are either now gone or don’t have film-specific journalists on staff.

It is important to keep in mind that when it comes to a movie’s publicity, there are more movies than ever but far fewer major media outlets that cover film. But before you shout “it’s impossible!”, remember that the other side of the field has also expanded. Be it newsletters or social media, there are a ton of opportunities; but it is important to find out if your publicists know how to access that. Few do, I am afraid.

It should also be clear that you generally need a different publicist depending on the type (doc vs fiction) or even genre of your film, as well as someone for international versus domestic.

I couldn’t have built this starter list without Sundance’s 2024 Publicist list. I didn’t find a more recent version unfortunately. When I share contact information here, it comes from Sundance’s list. Otherwise I leave it to you to find that information, but since Sundance shared it, it seemed fine to share it further.

I do dream of a real field guide. One filled with filmmakers’ quotes on what their collaborators got right… or not. One that listed some of the projects each worked on. Maybe had quotes from the publicists too, like what was their favorite project to work on and why. Feel free to use the comments for such things. Please.

---

50+ US FILM PUBLICISTS, a/o 2026

updated 7/24/26