Sundance Award Winner ‘Ricky’ Finally Gets a Theatrical Release — and a Kickstarter Campaign to Help Reach More Audiences

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. There’s no shortage of acclaimed movies at film festivals that fail to find distribution. We remind people of just how many there are every season . But, as of late, the enterprising producers behind some of these titles have found more creative ways to get their movies out to the public. One such movie, “ Ricky ,” is doing just that. “Ricky,” director Rashad Frett’s film that won the Sundance Directing Award at last year’s Sundance, is going the self-distribution route and will be released theatrically on March 20, 2026, IndieWire can reveal exclusively. Though the producers of “Ricky” are partnering with Blue Harbor Entertainment to help facilitate the release, with the film opening in select cities, it is a true independent release with the filmmakers retaining the movie’s rights. Today, they’re launching a Kickstarter campaign to help support its release effort, offering the chance for audiences to gift tickets to at-risk organizations and communities. Find the fundraiser here , and watch the first trailer for the film above. “Ricky” had plenty of enthusiasm and interest coming out of Sundance. IndieWire’s review out of the festival called first-time director Frett a “major force” to watch. And though it attracted some distribution offers, Steelo Brim, a producer on “Ricky,” told IndieWire that none of the options were quite right. It’s a project that he and his partners put their “heart and soul” into, and they didn’t want to see its rights tied up for the next 20 years. “None of them felt right or like they had our best interests at heart. We wanted our voice and messaging to be as pure or real to the independent audience,” Brim told IndieWire. “I know we’re in a super blessed position to be able to independently release. I think about getting creative around it, and looking at the industry and the current landscape, and I feel like we have to get creative in the industry if we want to stay alive, not just with our camera and scripts, but with how we distribute and how we market and how we get our art out to the masses. Because if we don’t do that, then independent film will die.” “Ricky” stars Stephan James (“If Beale Street Could Talk”), Sheryl Lee Ralph (“Abbott Elementary”), and Titus Welliver, and it’s a film about a 30-year-old ex-offender now navigating life after 15 years in incarceration. The film explores the threat of recidivism and how few resources the title character is offered after he leaves prison despite having spent his entire adult life there, making finding stability even more difficult and out of reach. “This all-too-familiar premise might lend itself to melodrama, but ‘Ricky’ emerges as a marvelously understated examination of...

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