Friends & Family October 2024 Update

In the month of October, Food and Country’s long journey that started at Sundance in 2023 will reach a new crescendo. 

Because of you -- the funders, participants, crew and supporters of Food and Country -- we are finally fully deploying our outreach and engagement campaign including theatrical bookings in over a dozen markets, our TVOD release and the kick off of our higher educational campaign.

We want to highlight some things to look forward to and, as you have interest and bandwidth, support and amplify.

Through our partnership with Greenwich Entertainment we will be in theaters including the IFC in New York (Oct 2-5), Los Angeles region (Oct 9-12) and in a dozen other communities across the country.  

You can follow this link to track upcoming screenings: https://www.foodandcountryfilm.com/screenings

Laura and Ruth will be appearing in person in New York and Laura will be on-site in Los Angeles with special guests in both cities. Please spread the word and come say hi!

Our press team led by Nancy Wallen/ACME and RJ Millard/Obscured Pictures have been doing a great job with earned media. Keep an eye out for upcoming appearances on Morning Joe plus (xxxxxxx…other podcasts and interviews).

If you want to help get the word out, please follow and repost our social media content (xxx xxx xxx). You can also access this special friends and family social media toolkit here: xxxxxx

We are incredibly excited about our partnership with Kinema, which is giving us opportunities to host community screenings and events in non-traditional venues. Next week we are announcing a formal partnership with the Independent Restaurant Coalition to align the film with their ongoing advocacy and public education work. IRC members are promoting the film to their mailing lists, hosting local community conversations, appearing at screenings and talking about food systems issues in the media. We are thankful for their partnership.

We are also utilizing Kinema to host a special virtual screening and conversation on October 10 targeted to Ruth’s 40,000 substack subscribers. This special event will allow subscribers to view the film and related conversation before our October 22 TVOD release date.

Through the support of the Stolte Family Foundation, we have been able to invest in statewide organizing to explore how we can maximize visibility for the film with statewide stakeholders throughout Washington State. This has resulted in (xxxxxxxxxxx). We feel strongly that the Washington State work creates a template that could be applied to other states/regions in bridging the rural/urban divide in 2025 and beyond.

Finally, while October’s push is focused on our theatrical and TVOD launch, do know that behind the scenes we are cranking up our educational distribution push in partnership with Gooddocs. We feel strongly that one of the most important legacies of the film will be shaping how generations of 18-22 year old college students think about and understand our food systems, competition policy, rural economic development and the importance of coming together to solve critical problems.

All of this work would not be possible without your ideas, connections, emotional support, and, yes, financial contributions. We have built a great team for this project led by Michael Bracy and his Policy in Focus team with support from 8 Above and a national network of strategists and advisors. 

As we head into the next stage of our journey, we are mindful of transitioning this campaign into something sustainable that allows us to build off of our successes without requiring significant overhead or resources. We will be reaching out to our existing donors to take your pulse on our next direction as we make some difficult decisions ahead.

Most importantly, thank you again for everything. We would not be here without all of you.

Best,

Laura, Paula, Caroline