Hello everyone and welcome back to people Jew want to know
podcast. Today's conversation features
one of our community's most underrated dark horse badass
individuals, Neil Friedman. Neil is the founder and
president of Minutia Films, AUS based distribution and
international sales company, as well as High Flix, the world's
largest streaming platform dedicated to Jewish content
around the globe. You might be thinking, wait, we
have a separate streaming service just for Jewish TV and
film? And the answer is yes, it's High
Flix. If you'd like to try out High
Flix, I have a special promo code in the show notes of this
episode where you can redeem a whole year of the service for
just $36. It's a great way to support an
up and coming Jewish business and see what amazing Jewish
shows and film we have. I was skeptical myself at first,
like why we need a separate streaming service, but now that
I've had it for three months, I want to say it's somewhat of a
hidden gem. And this is generally Neil's
claim to fame. He discovers hidden gems and
masterpieces and develops them. Neil has had Menemsha since 1998
and has set a record by representing 5 Academy Award
nominees five years in a row. Those nominees are all
international, including films from Canada, Argentina, Czech
Republic and others. High Flix was founded in 2020
and showcases exclusive content featuring Jewish life in all its
ways, with award-winning and critically acclaimed series such
as The New Black, The Lesson, Stissel The Chef and many
others. I have to say that I was really
inspired by this episode. Firstly, Neil has kind of the
same effect that Julie Smelansky had on me when I spoke to her.
They pushed me to like have this inner drive to just hustle.
Neil is emblematic of Jewish ingenuity, creative problem
solving, and a desire to do what's right, even when it
sometimes means swimming upstream, if you will.
We often talk about Hollywood and how they've let the Jewish
community down. Thankfully, we have people like
Neil holding down the Fort for us and representing us in a
steadfast way in Hollywood. Would love your thoughts on this
episode. I really enjoyed it so much and
I hope you do too. Hey Neil, welcome to people.
Do you want to know podcast? Thank you, Margarita, very happy
to be here. Where are you based?
You look like you're in an office.
Yeah, I'm in Los Angeles. I'm originally from New York,
but I've been here since 1988. Oh wow.
Yeah, so it's hot Hollywood. OK, amazing.
That's what brought me here, Hollywood.
Makes sense. Please tell us about yourself.
What do you do and how did you get there?
I started out as a lawyer in New York on Park Ave. as a corporate
lawyer and then it became an entertainment lawyer.
Has worked for the first four or five years of my my career as a
lawyer. And then I was hired by film
companies to to run business affairs for for those companies.
Two of which one is Vestron, which is based in Connecticut,
was the premier DVD distributor when DVD was at his high point.
And then I moved over to New Line Cinema, which people know,
and spent about a year and a half there.
But on one of my trips to Los Angeles for work, I got
approached by a lawyer that I had just recently done a deal
with, who asked if I'd be interested in working at
Columbia Pictures slash Tristar Pictures and running Frank
Price's company at Tristar. And I said yes.
And I got on a plane and moved 3000 miles first day at the
studio, which I hadn't been and never been to a studio prior.
I drove into what I thought would be my parking area and
then I looked down and I saw my name on the on the on the
parking spot. So I knew it was in the right
area. That's very fancy.
Yeah, and I had a bathroom with a phone in it that's probably as
big as the office that I'm working in now.
It was just, you know, it was too much for me, really.
You know, the studio world is so different from the independent
world. And I stayed there for four or
five years working with Frank in this independent company.
And then when Frank was made head of Columbia Pictures, after
Guber Peters and Sony bought Columbia Pictures, I stayed with
him as a business affairs executive.
From there, I I was hired by Ed Pressman Films to run his
company for 5 1/2 years when we made 16 movies with a very
strong period. I financed every one of those
movies. We had a it was a terrific
period of time when, you know, independent was really at its
height. Then I, William Morris reached
out to me and I worked there for two years as Co head of the
independent film division. And then I had a big choice to
make Margarita. I was, I think I was in my late
40s and I said to myself, well, this is the time you're going to
either work for, continue to work for somebody else for the
rest of your life or you're going to start your own company.
And I had a grandfather that came in from Germany in the
191880 era era who started a family business.
And you know, that was in my stomach.
And I said, OK, I'm going to, I'm going to start Minamsha
Films. And we started in 1998 Minamsha
Films. And then the first five years we
were international sales company.
Crazy enough, each of the five years that we were an
international sales company, we had an Oscar nominated film.
That's, you know, probably mostly luck in some good sense
on my part. My daughter was growing up and,
you know, I wanted to stay off airplanes.
So I flipped into being a North American distributor and I had
sold every film that we were working on internationally to
Sony classics. And I sort of watched their
pattern and how they released art films.
And I, I just taught myself once we started.
And I was very lucky to get a film called Gloomy Sunday in the
second year of our existence that did $1.5 million at the box
office. I don't know how I did it, but
it was a big success. I guess I chose the right movie.
Oh my gosh. Yeah.
This is so fascinating because what are the skills that like?
At some point you have to pivot your skill set because what you
learned in law, you had to learn a bunch of new skills to do what
you do now. It's more like business
development is deal making. It's intuition around what's
going to make good art. How do you think you learn this
along the way? It's a perfect question to ask
because I was always asking myself that question, am I going
to go move from being a business person to be being a creative
person? And obviously I had my doubts
because I've never done that. I think the big transition for
me was the experience of William Morris.
You know, that was reading scripts, that was working with
people in the, in the independent film industry,
putting films together. And I allowed myself to that
period to, to grow. And I financed a couple of
films, one for Bruce Willis. And, you know, so it made some
sales at Sundance. And I started to think that, you
know, this is something that I maybe could do.
And the first step I took when I started the company was very
much what I did for AD Pressman, which was to finance a film,
mostly internationally. I mean, we sold The Crow.
Remember that film of Brandon Lease, you know, obvious
horrible passing during the film.
I financed the film by getting on the phone and calling, you
know, different companies in Europe because we had a sales
company that was going to work on that film.
And all of a sudden we realized that we, we, we hired somebody
who wasn't getting the job done. So I picked, I had to pick up
the the ball from there and I was able to finance the crow.
And from there, I started to develop relationships in the
International Film business where I could be very successful
in terms of financing films. That was really my expertise
because I did that for 5 1/2 years there and I did that at
William Mars. But in selling those, those
international, the films to international, you, you got, you
start reading scripts because you need to be able to sell and
soft sell is what I, I do and present the film in a way that
somebody would be comfortable, you know, putting your money
where their mouth is. So and then I, instead of going
right into the US distribution, I, I just picked up and became a
international sales agent mostly of European films because that
was where my heart was. And through that process I
developed again into learning more about the creative side of
the business. And when I picked up in 2003 and
became AUS distributor, I slowly, quickly needed to grow
as a creative executive. I think I had crossed the line
by that point. And I would watch film and read
scripts and, and teach myself. And what's interesting about
that was I was, I was very good at art house distribution, but I
realized one thing, I was going to be really good at art house
distribution of Jewish films. What?
Was that why do you think? Yeah.
I think it's just family. My, you know, it's funny, I come
from a very middle class family in, in Little Neck, NY in New
York. And my parents would go to a
different art film every day of the weekend.
And when I was beginning the business, I would actually go to
my parents and send them four or five links to films that I was
considering. And they were the ones that said
you should, you've got to release this film Gloomy Sunday.
That's the one in 2004. So I take credit my parents for,
you know, getting us started by picking the right film and you
know, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
And I saw in the marketplace for art house films that there
really wasn't anybody doing that really knew as what I thought I
knew more than anybody else, which was the Jewish market.
And then in 2012, we became exclusively a Jewish distributor
and have been ever since. I.
Want you to tell me a little bit about High Flex.
Yeah, this is a very interesting concept, You know, a streaming
platform dedicated to just Jewish film.
Talk to me about that. Didn't happen with the idea that
I wanted to be a conglomerate or, or you know, a big guy.
It came out of the fact that we had three films in 2018 and 2019
that we distributed from Minamsha.
That crossed $1,000,000, which is, you know, quite phenomenal
for, you know, three films in a row by the way.
And the third that was the threshold for making a deal to
Netflix. That was the known in the
marketplace and the 1st 2 sold to Netflix.
And the third film, which is 1945, which is a black and white
Hungarian film that we went over $1,000,000 with, which is
incredible to think that you can do that with a Hungarian black
and white film. It was the best of the three,
you know, in terms of quality. They had already evolved to the
point where they were interested less in independent films for
the channel. And I love this film so much.
I said I'm not going to rely on Netflix where they say yes or
no, a thumbs up or thumbs down. I want to start my own streaming
service and I want to start a Jewish streaming service as an
adjunct to what I was doing at Minutia.
So when we had about 120 Jewish themed movies in our library and
immediately the first week of the pandemic we started High
flex, we put up 40 of our minutiae titles.
And such good timing. What were people doing?
They were sitting at home. Right.
We were ready. In other words, we didn't react
to the pandemic. We were ready to go and we have
business plans. We were ready to go anyway.
And when the pandemic hit and said we got to do this now.
So that's what started High Flex in 2021.
This is like such an interesting story of prudent business sense
and also luck and divine timing. It's really incredible to hear
you talk about. And the more you learn about,
you know, people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Elon Musk,
all of them will say definitively, it's always having
good business sense. But also.
Luck. I say it every single time.
See, the thing for me was that, you know, streaming is mostly TV
series and I had never been in the TV business.
I've been in a little a little bit in the TV business because I
handled the Crow as ATV series for for Ed Pressman.
But in essence, I knew nothing about the TV business.
So, and I needed to know not only TV business, but I needed
to know the Jewish TV business, you know, Jewish subject matter.
And I spent like 6 months watching everything I could
watch, you know, from Israel and from around the world.
And I felt that after about six months, I just go with my
stomach. And, and what had been
successful for us at Menemsha, having seven films that did over
$1,000,000 transferred over in terms of my talent to TV series
that I thought would, you know, be successful on, on High Flix.
We're very lucky. Margarita, the first acquisition
we made after those Manemptia films went on is a series from
Israel called Shabbat Nakimo, the New Black.
It's like Entourage in a, in a yeshiva.
And I think we have three, if not Four Seasons of that.
And it was the first acquisition and it's still the biggest hit
we have on the Chi Flicks. The first time I came across
Menemsha films because I don't operate in this world, so it's
my own lack of knowledge, not because it's not, you know, out
and about. Was I watched bad Shabbos
because it was on Netflix and I had seen a couple like
influencers I follow post about or maybe there was a release
party and this wasn't typically something I gravitate towards.
I don't watch a lot of films and TV to begin with.
I try to like create more than I consume and I I watched this
movie with no expectations and I was so blown away.
And I was trying to leading up to this conversation with you
and I was thinking about like, what was it about Bad shop?
Is that like I liked so much? Aside from the fact that the
comedic writing is strong, what meant the most to me that I
often feel gets overlooked by like General Hollywood if you
will, is the Jews were not portrayed as victims.
They were not portrayed as weak, in need of a righteous Gentile
to step in and give them a safety net, which was a contrast
to what I had seen on Nobody Wants This.
Where these Jewish characters have like no identity of their
own and Shabbat is just a feeling and being Jewish is, you
know, eating holla. Something about Bad Shop is
there's just an anchor, a clear, unapologetic Jewish anchor that
I saw that I think rings true through almost every piece of
content that you have on high flicks and the audience that you
reach. It's not just they ask for Jews.
You have meaningful content for Orthodox Jews, for anywhere in
the world, for European Jews. And this is exactly kind of like
the way I see the future of Jewish storytelling being told.
I'm wondering what's your take like looking at Hollywood for so
many years, how do you think Jewish storytelling should look
in 2026? Well, I think Bad Chavez is a
very good example what Jewish storytelling should be it
obviously it should be diverse. I mean, we acquire films from
every part of the globe. I think we're in acquired films
from six of the seven continents, Antarctica being the
one we haven't yet acquired film from.
And the idea is never do the same thing twice.
They had Shabbos, the two writers or Modern Orthodox.
It's so so they they knew the territory and there's some very
religious side aspects of the film that are specific to
someone knowledge having gone to yeshiva.
Yeah, like it'll go over your head if you don't know it.
Exactly. So it's the real deal.
You know, it's, it's a level beyond just a, any of the TV
shows that are light and fluffy. But the, the thing that I think
there's two things that really work for bad shops.
It was very funny. And it was a family and it was a
real family where not everybody got along with the parents.
Everybody had a different personality, but they sort of,
they loved each other. And there was this, you know, 33
kids and each of them were different and they each had
different relationships with their parents and they each had
different, you know, partners, girlfriends or boyfriends.
And obviously it's about an interfaith marriage, which is,
you know, shocking to Kyra Sedgwick as the mother of the
family. And the obviously the leader of
the of the if you see the film, she's the strongest parent in of
the two. And she did a fantastic
performance. But that that was luck.
OK. I love the film.
That's the first thing you have to say to yourself.
I had it. And also I had a very, I had
done this with many Jewish films.
I wanted to start in South Florida because in the winter
months when the population double s in the winter months.
So we started in December and we ran all the way through into
Pesach in South Florida. The great news about and we ran
17 weeks in the same theater and in other theaters as well.
The great thing about that strategy is that those people go
up north, you know, just for Pesach or just after Pesach.
So when we released the film in May in New York, Boston,
Chicago, Philadelphia, etcetera, etcetera, the word of mouth had
already been there and they had, we had played the film festivals
there. And there's a great idea behind
the success of Badshah was the world is tough these days and is
mostly bad news for going on around, especially for the
Jewish world with the troubles, you know, in Israel, other
issues that you know, I don't have to get specific about.
So people needed the release and laughter is a release and one
when people get together in a cinema.
Laughter is contagious and that's what made this film
really work. We played 19 weeks consecutive
at the Quad, the second highest grossing film in the history of
the Quad. And you know, it's like, you
know, who would have thought this?
You know, we did $1.5 million with the film, which you know,
is the highest grossing film we've ever had.
I never expected that, but it caught on like wildfire, you
know, everywhere. And people just enjoyed it and
they, they really needed that relief from the day-to-day news
cycle and, and to be, to be able to get away from it.
I think of that, all those musicals that were made in the
30s, you know, during the Depression that got you, you
know, not thinking about the reality.
That's what laughter does, too. It really is like, you know,
when you think about post Holocaust, when all those Jews
came to New York and they were discriminated against and they
started their own. Like that's how Hollywood was
built. You're building the next
iteration of that just for our generation.
You know, when certain doors close, you go and you make your
own streaming platform. When streamers don't want to
stream films or shows, you go and you start something
independent. And it's really like, it's so
inspiring. As you were talking, I was
thinking about like, so I come from an Eastern European family
where my dad, for example, he's a very quintessential Eastern
European man. Like he's not going to say I
love you. Maybe he'll give you a hug, but
very warm on the inside. But like outwardly Eastern
European and the love language that I have with my dad is
anytime he wants to show me that he cares about me, he calls me
to recommend a movie he's seen that he's liked and I do the
same. So anytime I'm like, I'm
thinking of you. If I've seen a movie that I
would like, I call him. And so bad Shabbos was a film
that I called my dad about to say you and mom got to sit down
and watch this. It was one of the few times that
I audibly laughed recently watching something, and that
movie will forever have kind of that like.
A little bookmark or I guess side note that that was one of
the films that I called to ask my dad about.
And actually, as I'm thinking about it, I spoke to him on the
phone the other day and he was like, what movies have you
watched recently? Right.
Right, yes. So the, the, the point you're
making is exactly what we hoped for with the Jewish film because
people, you know, Jews have their own, you know,
conversations with other Jews and family members.
But we never expected to go that far where it became, you know,
extra special, you know, I had targeted $1,000,000 box office
and we end up at 1,000,005, which it sounds like it's close
1,000,005 and a million. But realized today people don't
go to the cinema generally speaking, especially the older
audience. So $500,000 more is, is really a
lot now because you got to get people off their couches to get
into the cinema. And, and it was mostly played to
an older audience, some younger audience.
But we're working to, to have a younger audience, by the way,
because we know we need to have a younger audience both at
Menemsha and in Highflex. But I have another film we're
releasing called We Met at Grossingers, which is all about,
you know, the Catskills and why. And when Jews couldn't were not
accepted at resorts in the Adirondacks in New York, they
started their own resorts. It's the same idea.
And what the Grossinger family did is shown in this film that
we're releasing in in next year, the end of this year actually,
And it's the same thing all over again.
Instead of, you know, say woes me, you know, I'm getting all
this anti-Semitism. So you pick up yourself by the
boots, by your bootstraps and and you go and make something
happen. As an immigrant, that really,
really resonates with me. I completely agree.
And it's really going to take each one of us to step up
because that that's how the Jews do it.
I wish there was an easier path, right?
I wish it didn't have to be this way, but this is our
responsibility to our community and to ourselves.
You have kids, and I'm curious to know how you're talking to
them about this historic time that we're in as a Jewish
people. I mostly do it through film.
Do you also call your kids and tell them to watch certain?
Movies. My daughter lives in Brooklyn.
She's a set designer, so and I think our tastes are pretty
similar. Some, you know, and her mom is a
director. I'm a film distributor, so I
didn't want her to go into the film business.
But it sounded like with those two people as your parents and
having seen a lot of films with your parents, it was absolutely
destined that she was going to be in be part of the film
industry. So, you know, she's a production
designer, slash set designer, and she loves what she does,
which she learned I think from each of us that the best thing
you could do for a living is something you're really
passionate about. And I, you know, you can tell
from talking to me how passionate I am about this.
And I, I feel like I'm on a mission.
What do you think is next? What are you working?
What are you hoping to achieve like in this next era?
We want to grow high flex, OK, more and more.
We're only in the English language world, US, Canada, UK,
Australia, New Zealand, we're going to go worldwide for one.
And we also have the same idea about high flex as we do about
Minamsha. Just as an aside, Margarita, I
think we have a film from every Eastern European country,
Minamsha that were distributed. And that is part of my quest in
finding, you know, wonderful films that other people are not
looking at. I was interested in Hungarian
Polish. We've got so every Eastern
European country, you know, had been Oscar nominated,
shortlisted. And, you know, it's just a style
of filmmaking that you don't see in the US, generally speaking,
because it's, you know, historical in a lot of senses.
And it tells me about my past, where I came from.
That's really what you know the the part of this job is to
understanding where you came from.
There's something that feels flat about a lot of Hollywood,
and I don't know when it went that way, but I think you're on
to something with the fact that films that are made in other
parts of the world, they perhaps have more substance and they
demand more. They have less on the nose kind
of messaging where you really have to pay close attention to
see the through line. How I got lucky about that is
the first three years of Minamsha we had a foreign
language film that was nominated, one from Argentina
and two from Czech. I've got about Czech and so I
was introduced to that world very quickly.
I was always interested in European cinema more than
American cinema anyway, I'm old school.
That's how I fell in love with cinema.
So it's in terms of high flex. We want to have a series from
every country in the world. We have Argentina, we have
Switzerland, obviously we have a lot of Israeli series that's
been very successful for us, Germany, France, Austria.
So it's part it has to be fun for for us too and searching
around the world for, you know, Israel, I almost said the wrong
word. Jewish series and being a
diaspora focused individual about storytelling from all over
the world. That's something that I'm, you
know, it's part of my growth in my in my education as I do this
work and I and it's a learning. It's wonderful.
You feel you start to understand more and more about where you
came from. And one other thing that's
really important for me, and I want to get this in, is that my
great grandfather emigrated from Germany in 19801880.
His first job was walking up fridges to ice boxes to the
tenements as a salesman. So he would sell ice boxes to
the people living in the tenements.
Then he finally, this is a great story.
He finally said, I wanted to get an office and it was very close
to Chinatown. And they, they rented this
office in, lo and behold, in the cupboards in Chinatown, in this
new office for them, they opened up the cupboards and all it was
all this China, you know. So they expanded into kitchen
equipment supplies across the board and they became the
biggest kitchen equipment supplier in the United States.
Every kitchen equipment supplier is on the Bowery.
And they were on what, Cooper Square?
And I said, you talk about luck, OK?
And so the Friedman storyline for my great grandfather was
that. And I love the entrepreneur
aspect of that. And that's what I always reach
back to. I think of myself as an
immigrant, no different than my great grandfather, and that's
what motivates me a lot. You're an immigrant to LA from
East to West. I'm wondering if there's a quote
UN quote bad Jewish movie that you secretly love.
You know, I was thinking about that a long time, thinking that
you might bring that up. I can't think of that of 1.
You know, I, I, there's films that I love and and therefore I
want to work on them, but I don't know that I've I've ever
seen a what you would call a bad movie and that I secretly love.
I'm not, you know, I think of myself as a curator, film
scholar. So I can't, I couldn't come up
with one actually in thinking about that.
I was thinking about that question myself, honestly, like
how I would answer it. So when nobody wants this came
out with their second season, my Instagram page went viral
because I tore into them. I will be honest with you, like
it went really viral for the account size I had at the time.
It was shared thousands of times what I posted and I talked
about. Nobody wants this being like the
modern day. Keeping the Faith with Ben
Stiller and I referred to it as some Jewish guys wet dream about
what they wish it was like to end up with a beautiful blonde
bombshell whatever and not actually invest in understanding
what is this heritage that somebody comes from.
But I have to tell you, I enjoyed both Nobody Wants This
and Keeping the Faith, and those are bad quote UN quote Jewish
movies that I kind of liked. I didn't see keeping the faith,
but I've seen nobody wants this. I couldn't keep up with it, so I
watch everything. I think Jewish, by the way.
You have to. It's like market research.
Exactly, exactly. So anything on any channel or
any streamer other than in addition to iflex, I'm going to
watch just so I know what what the market is and and what's
what's out there. I didn't respond to that series,
but that's just just me. You know, I couldn't get through
it, so I didn't watch the second season.
So I'm not going to make any assumptions, but the reason that
you, you and I probably had the same rationale, but I had to
watch it because I wanted to make commentary on it.
It makes for great content. So that's why I continue.
And I understand. Yeah.
If I I wanted to have a strong opinion on something, I needed
to be able to say, like, I watched it start to finish.
The other thing I was curious about is on your syllabus of,
like, great film that young Jews need to see, kind of like
reading, you know, great literature.
What would you say? Well, I have a long list.
OK, great. It doesn't have to be 3.
Let's let's hear it. Yeah, I mean, we had a
documentary called Rape Europa in 2007 or 6 or something like
that. It was the first time that a
film showed another side of the Nazi era which was theft, not
killing. And art, right?
Theft of art. Theft of art.
And it all started in a book that was written in the 1990s by
Lynn Nicholas. And then there was a documentary
that acquired the rights to that book.
And it was something that no, nobody knew about.
Almost everybody didn't know about it.
And it did $1.2 million at the box office and shortlisted for
Oscar. And because everybody was so
focused on the camps and the killing, they didn't know this
other side of the Nazi era. And my eyes were just wide open
about it. And I think it's a film that
everybody should see because it's it's new information.
Obviously Monuments Men, George Clooney did a film Monuments
Men. After that.
I take a little credit for Monuments Men being having been
been financed and made because we crossed $1,000,000 with Rape
Europa. And so it became something in
the zeitgeist a bit. I have a film called, What I
really love is a Mexican film called Nora's Will.
It's about a Passover dinner prepared by a woman who used to
be married to somebody who prepared it before she passed.
And these all these clues around the apartment about how much
family meant to her. It's a precious film.
That's what I looked look to find these hidden gems.
I mean, it's it's a small movie that we did I think $800,000
with because it was so good. Obviously bad shot.
Assuming that, you know, you don't get something just so
straight down the middle like that.
And you know, I'm proud of, I'm proud of other films.
We have film, you probably should, I would recommend to
you, Margarita, called Live and Become about the Ethiopian
migration to it's a narrative film, the Ethiopian Jewish
migration to Israel in 1990, Operation Moses.
You know, it's a French film. You know, it's epic in scope.
And that's also something I didn't know about until I saw
that film. I had no idea about the
Ethiopian. Now we're into all these Jewish
communities in Africa that we're starting to be aware of that
we're fascinated by Uganda and other places.
So you know, you start to you learn more and more about your
heritage. There was that one.
It was either a show or a movie. It came out maybe 10 years ago,
15 years ago, where the Israeli, the IDF soldiers pretended to be
scuba dive instructors to rescue people on the border of either
Egypt or somewhere in Africa. And that was so cool and I.
Know the film you're talking about?
I don't remember the title, but I know the film that you're
talking about, you know, because I watch everything, right?
So, and that was wonderful. You know, there's other films
like Here's a Funny Story. We had the Israeli entry for
Academy Awards this year, movie called The Sea, which is a
Palestinian story, and it got a lot of Flack in Israel because
it was a Palestinian story that became voted in as the Israeli
entry. That never changed my opinion
one iota. It was just the best film.
It's the merit. That I'd ever seen, and I still
abide by that. You know, one of the films that
I saw in college, but The Bicycle Thief that got me
excited about, you know, international or European films.
This is along the lines of the Bicycle thief.
That's how good, great it is. And, you know, we tried our best
to get on the shortlist and and be be nominated and the film
deserved that. Obviously it was an uphill
struggle with with, you know, the, the taint on Israeli in the
Academy, but it doesn't change my opinion.
I I think the film is one of the greatest, you know, best films
we've ever worked on. And by the way, raping Europa,
when we started, we didn't get into any festivals and the film
makers were saying to me, what's going on here, Neil?
We didn't get into can, we didn't get into Berlin, we
didn't get into to Telluride. What's, what's the story?
I said, just take it. Trust me, this is a great film
and it's going to find its level.
Lo and behold, the film did $1.2 million and shortlisted for
Oscar. So you know, you believe, you
know, you do enough of this. You sort of, you have your
opinion about what you think is, you know, viable and also what,
what is great. And that's what you're trying to
do all the time. Tell me, what is your message to
Jewish people? It's all about storytelling.
And every time you know, the Band's Visit, OK, that's, that's
a story that, you know, that's a great example.
We didn't distribute that movie, but it's it's a different story.
So the diversity of the storytelling.
Why? Because because Jews live in
every part of the world, you know, we have Bulgarian films on
our on high flex. We have a Argentinian series on
high flex called Family Therapy. So we're still discovering and
it'll never end. There's so many stories to tell.
And one thing I have to say now is the Israeli television
production and business is pound for pound, the best television
production business in the world.
I mean, the stories that come out of Israel and the series
that have come out of Israel. And we all know the big ones,
Schnitzel and Fauda. That's what got me to really, by
the way, the notice that Fauda was so big, I guess on Netflix
and and Schnitzel also, it gave me the courage to start Kai
Flix. And I think, you know, we didn't
do bad with Shabbat Nakim as as a starter, so we got lucky there
too. And it is luck.
Neil, this has been amazing. How can people connect with you
and keep up with your work? Well, we have two companies.
I hope that people understood that because I didn't really
walk you through that. Minimptia Films is a North
American theatrical distributor. So it's Minimptia films.com and
we acquire Margarita. I hope you're sitting down.
We acquire 17 to 20 movies a year.
That's crazy because there are 17.
That's how we want. We do it based on quality, so if
one year there was only 13 films that we want to release, then
we'd only pick up 13. But this past year we picked up
17. And on High Flix, you know, it's
high flix.com, you know, that's we, we've acquired a new series
that we're really excited to announce and present to the
world. And we're growing our marketing
capabilities and we're going to go worldwide.
And, you know, we're following in the footsteps of what
Minamsha did, where it grew and grew its knowledge over years
and years. And, you know, got to the point
where, like I said, just before the pandemic, where we had three
films in a row to $1,000,000. It's going to be a long, it's OK
to go slow and grow a little bit at a time.
And that's what we're doing. And we have more and more
quality films and series. And the great part of my job is
it's fun and it's, it's, I don't, I don't think of his
work. I think of it as part of my, you
know, my college PhD in Jewish studies, which by the way, I got
a little quick little story to tell you.
And people make fun of me for this.
When I was at the University of Pennsylvania as a as an
undergraduate, I made, I was a double major in ethnicity and
film at the age of 19. I'm now 72 years old.
I'm doing exactly the same thing.
And the ethnicity and film. So it was.
It was in my soul. Wow, out of curiosity, how many
how big's your team like? How many people do you have
working? For you, for high flex is a
little bigger, we have 7 or 8. For minamsha, it's a little
smaller, 5 or 6. And you know, you really have to
work hard. You know, the Jewish niche is a
small niche, so over you want to be conscious of overhead.
But everybody's been here, has been here for 15 years because
they love what we do and they love working.
We're like a family and you have to love what you do.
And that's the way it works. Why we have such a we punch
above our weight is what I'm saying to you.
I feel like you would have a good philosophy on hiring.
Like how? What do you look for?
Heidi, who's my partner in both companies, We have our head of
marketing, Ben, Sorry, who went to NYU film school, but he was a
Boy Scout as a, as a young person.
And that's what made her think that we had somebody who was
going to really work hard. And we hired him.
And now 17 years later, he's, he's still with us.
And you know, by the way, I give him a, you know, a lot, if not
more credit than me for the success of Bad Shabbos.
I mean, he did an amazing job with that.
And, you know, he's a very skilled marketer now.
And you know, we're, we're coming out with influenced new
film. Yes, I had gel like last week.
We meant to record. Exactly.
So we're we're opening at the Quad at on May 8th and I flew in
for 24 hours to see the film in front of an audience at 92nd St.
Y weekend before last. So I can do my homework for for
the film. And we're looking forward to to
releasing that film and, and being as successful as we can
be, which is what we do. We, the idea is, is to do better
than do the most, the best you can do with a film.
And you know, we take it very seriously.
Everyone is like a child. And we isolate the film and we
think about it each film differently.
And we think through from without looking at other films
that we released, thinking about how best to release each film.
And I think that's been a, we were able to do that.
And I think that's been a big reason for our success that's.
Absolutely amazing. I have one final question for
you. It's one that I ask every guest
and perhaps after hearing you speak, this question might be
the most important, which is who would you like to nominate for
people? Do you want to know?
Easy, Daniel Robbins, filmmaker of a bad Shabbos.
Perfect. Thank you.
And the reason why he's, he's a Mensch and he's very talented
and he's a wonderful guy. And he gets a lot of the credit
for the success because he was available for Q&A when the film
was in theatrical release. And, you know, I think a lot of
theatrical releasing is connectivity with the people
that made the movie, sort of event programming.
And the fact that people got to know Daniel made them even love
the film even more. So that's my, that's my, that's
my nomination. That's perfect.
And I will do the set that up for you by the way.
Thank you. Thank you.
It has been such a delight to speak with you.
I have so much energy just in hearing your story and I can't
wait to dive into High Flix. I've so much travel in the month
of May and that is exactly when I'm going to pop off on High
Flix and watch everything that you suggested and it's going to
be legendary. Thank you so much for doing.
3000 programs, so if you don't like something.
Just switch over to something else.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Pleasure.
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