FEATURE FILMS SHORT FILMS SERIES 2024 Company Overview www.FLOURISHINGFILMS.COM
P h o t o 9 2 9 5 5 8 3 0 © R o b e r t K n e s c h k e - D r e a m s t i m e . c o m a b o u t u s Based in Los Angeles, CA, Flourishing Films LLC is a film/ TV production, distribution, and sales agency founded in January 2016. The company made its domestic debut at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and its international debut at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival and European Film Market (EFM). Previously having worked in feature acquisitions at Paramount Pictures, the experience inspired its founder to begin a film distribution and sales business to complement her production roots. Flourishing Films intends to expand access to Black, diverse, and female-driven filmed content from the US, Africa, the UK, and countries worldwide. The company aims to identify strong, well-written, and well-directed stories, target and market to specific global audiences in their respective territories, and offer all available rights to well-established and new distribution companies and outlets with creative and innovative distribution structures. As a production, distribution, and new media company, we reflect the lives and voices of the underrepresented and underestimated in real time by creating, producing, curating, and distributing content. We capture these voices and foreground their messages, free to be loud, bold, and unapologetic. When communities have worn the mask for far too long, we are here to broadcast their messages to the world. Expanding Access To Black, Diverse, Female-Driven Content Originating From The US, the UK, Africa and other Countries Beyond FLOURISHING FILMS
Flourishing Films recognizes film as both an art form as well as a vehicle for change P h o t o b y K a z z a k o v a | # 1 9 2 1 9 3 9 8 3 | w w w . d r e a m s t i m e . c o m EFURU FLOWERS CEO & Founder Efuru Flowers is the founder of Flourishing Inc. (aka Flourishing Films LLC), a Los Angeles-based international film distribution, sales agency, and production company focused on advancing and developing media that can effect change. Efuru began her career working for the late film director, screenwriter, and producer John Singleton at his company, New Deal Productions. This opportunity ignited her passion for film as an art form and a vehicle for change and paved the way for her success as a creative collaborator with filmmakers and talent. New Deal is also where she made formative connections and began building her extensive network of professional peers in sales, distribution, finance, and production. Since the company’s distribution arm’s founding in 2016, among the titles distributed are features, shorts, and documentaries that have also been screened at festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, America Black Film Festival, Cannes, Urbanworld, Locarno, Durban, Hot Docs, BlackStar, and TIFF (Ayiti Mon Amour, Three Ways, Strive, Right Near The Beach, Dreamstates, Paper Friends, A Moving Image, The Revolution Won’t Be Televised, Night Shift among others). As a producer, her most recent titles are Summer of Violence (2023), The World Is Ours (2022) a production with fellow Berlinale Talent Alum, writer/ director Areg Azatyan (The Romanticists) and Slow Pulse (2021), a co-production with Tribeca Studios and Proctor & Gamble, which premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and on broadcast TV (CBS).
Director, Screenwriter and Producer John Singleton on set Flourishing hired its first full-time staff member in January 2023. This position, Director of Distribution & Content Strategy is responsible for pitching and securing homes for library and newly signed titles in domestic and international territories. The company has licensed film and TV content into Hulu/Disney, Kanopy, BET, Gravitas, Crackle, Screen Media, Aspire, Breaking Glass, Criterion, FUBU, MNET, RLJ, IndiePix, Tricorder, and others. The company has always, and continues to receive offers for its content from various standard/ traditional outlets -- however in line with its mission, the company remains dedicated to holistically finding the best deals and creating the best value, for each project. The impetus for Flourishing Films galvanized at Paramount Pictures, where Efuru worked in Feature Acquisitions. She recognized a significant gap in the market when it came to representation, sales, production, and distribution of film and series material created by and about the Black diaspora and other underrepresented communities. The Flourishing Films library continues to grow and includes indie features, television series, and soon podcasts, as well as the development of fast channels. Ninety percent of the library has been licensed or sold to distributors worldwide, and the company’s footprint continues to grow. Efuru has produced a variety of content throughout her career, including a Fox presentation of Kim Cole’s stage play Homework; Sundance film Night Shift starring TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe (The Idol), and China Shavers (Judas and the Black Messiah); Urbanworld’s ‘Til Death starring Tamala Jones (Castle) and Sherman Augustus (Into the Badlands); ABFF’s Looking For Me starring Dayna Dooley (Insecure, The Upshaws); and Slow Pulse starring Jimme Falls (The Last Black Man in San Francisco). In 2020, with the COVID pandemic and people of conscience demanding an end to white supremacy, Flourishing Films’ production arm has ramped up to offer companies and organizations socially and politically driven content that engages followers and supporters around mission-critical goals. A recent project for Black Women Rally For Action revealed first-person accounts of discriminatory practices in healthcare services for women of color who contracted COVID in Los Angeles County. Currently in development on various projects including TV series How To America with Black American and South African cast; feature project Everything Little Thing Gonna Be Alright with UK and Jamaican cast, and an international producers team out of the UK and Singapore; development on feature project A Rooster on dedicated to diverse storytelling and harnessing the transformative power of cinema for meaningful impact
P h o t o b y N a p p y | # 3 0 6 3 9 1 0 P e x e l s . c o m P h o t o 9 2 9 5 5 8 3 0 © R o b e r t K n e s c h k e - D r e a m s t i m e . c o m new releases The sex comedy tells the story of two Black women and one Black man on the night of a threesome. Loaded with internal dialogue revealing deflected insecurities, the film climaxes with a slapstick sex scene that had the audience both blushing and laughing uncontrollably. THREE WAYS Year: 2023 Format: Feature Film Country: United States Genre: Adult Comedy Length: 92 mins Directed by: Jamal Dedeaux The Fire Escape (part of Festival de Cannes’ Cinéfondation initiative), Flourishing continues its mission to locate and/ or make content buyers want to license for the worldwide marketplace. Efuru is an alumna of the Producers Guild of America’s program, The Power of Diversity; Sundance Film Festival; Sundance Institute’s Financing Intensive, Berlinale Talents (Market Studio); and a member of Women In Film. She attended UCLA, where she earned a degree in Sociology. She is a founding member and co-chair of Black Women Rally For Action – Los Angeles, a community organization dedicated to advancing health, economic and social equity for all Los Angeles County Black women through direct action. She also sits on the UCLA-UC Irvine END DISPARITIES Center Community Action Board, where the organization addresses the many factors that influence health, from genetic factors to social factors, access to healthcare, food, and housing. She loves her work.
Carly Stewart is the queen of holiday celebrations, but her mistletoe misstep sends her running to a Holiday Hideaway that teaches her the importance of family, forgiveness, and fighting for love. Year: 2022 Format: Feature Film Country: United States Genre: Comedy Length: 180 mins Directed by: Cole Patterson Lamese Williams HOLIDAY HIDEAWAY RIGHT NEAR THE BEACH Year: 2020 Format: Feature Film Country: Jamaica Genre: Narrative Length: 80 mins Directed by: Gibrey Allen When prominent Jamaican sprinter Jeffrey Jacobs is brutally murdered, rumors about the secret life he may have lived create public uproar, causing obstacles to the murder investigation and for Jeffrey’s father, who simply wants justice for his son. Filmed on location with a cast of local Jamaicans, this film is an authentic case study of a country that continues to face the consequences of its turbulent past while trying to confront the new realities of sexuality and equality.
CHILDREN OF GOD Year: 2010 Format: Feature Country: Bahamas Genre: Drama Length: 104 minutes Directed by: Kareem Mortimer Two young Bahamian men on the path to out-of-the-closet self-respect are shadowed by a nasty current of outspoken homophobia in this tender, tough and touching drama. NOT TODAY Year: 2021 Format: Feature Country: India Genre: Drama Length: 92 minutes Directed by: Aditya Kripalani Aliah Rupawala, is a 24 year old Bohri Muslim girl from a very traditional family. She secretly becomes a Suicide Prevention Counsellor and on her first day she encounters a 52 year old man about to jump from the terrace of a high-rise. As she begins to try to bring him down, she is forced to confront why she became a Suicide Prevention Counsellor in the first place, and also share a lot of herself to get him to share and open up. Going all in, to save him, she begins to deal with and release the loneliness and grief in herself to be able to do the same in the caller. And in doing so, ends up healing not just her own heart, but also the heart of the man who has called, a man who has himself been a Suicide Prevention Counsellor for 15 years.
P h o t o b y M i l k o | A d o b e S t o c k # 1 4 1 7 4 4 6 6 4 6 24 20 www.flourishingfilms.com Graphic Design by MR Cooper Design EFURU FLOWERS Flourishing Films Head, Distribution & Sales [email protected] (323) 365-8132 Company Overview