Year End Letter from Kinolime CEO - 2025
Dear Kinolime Family —
— and yes, it is a big family now. Over 25,000 of us writers, readers, voters, and fans – all across the world!
I wanted to take a moment to do something rare in this industry: pause, look around, and actually take stock of what we’ve built together in 2025 – and then tell you about what’s coming next.
Kinolime is three years old. Which in startup years is already adolescent! What we’ve managed to accomplish in that time usually takes companies decades, a few rebrands, and at least one embarrassing pivot. We started with a simple idea: give the audience a voice and make great movies with them, not just for them. The results speak for themselves.
This year alone, you submitted over 3,400 scripts. We crowned two feature winners, one short winner, and optioned five additional projects. Our first-born, The Waif, is in the midst of a successful pre-production phase, with principal photography set for Q2 of 2026.
Our second child, Mob Mentality, follows closely behind in the first half of 2026 – and let me tell you, the new draft is hilarious. Our inaugural short-film winner, Pushing Daisy, has already wrapped production, with a final cut expected by the end of Q1 2026.
On the finished-film front, we premiered Our House Is on Fire at the Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival – where our leading actress, Anastasiia Pustovit, announced herself to the world when she was awarded Best Actress by the Ukrainian Film Critics. We filmed this movie on location in Kyiv, during the war, with bombs going off around us. To our knowledge, we were the only studio doing so. Our House Is on Fire is a statement maiden voyage.
We’re incredibly excited to share these projects with you – we’ve learned a lot of lessons and made some insightful observations along the way, which we’d like to share;
Talent is not defined by borders, geography, or distance. It’s everywhere. Scope, discipline, voice – these are the hallmarks of a great story, and they’re a universal language.
Constraints create clarity. Limits, whether they be budgetary, logistical, or otherwise, don’t limit or weaken stories; they fortify them. Storytelling is an act of problem solving, and the strongest stories will always find a way to survive and thrive.
Winning is the beginning, not the finish. Development is where projects are either elevated or exposed. The best stories are never truly finished, they’re constantly evolving.
Short films are proof of vision, not stepping stones. They reveal discipline, taste, and leadership faster than anything else. Sometimes, a succinct telling is the best way to leave the audience wanting more.
Transparency is essential to build audience trust at scale. Speed matters, but clarity is what sustains momentum. A robust community beats hierarchy. A shared mission outperforms a top-down model every time.
Now, let’s talk about what’s next.
In 2026, we’re launching Kinolime NXT, our first short-film competition for U.S. high school students. The goal is simple: give voice to fledgling storytellers and provide them the support they need to launch their careers. The winner receives a $5,000 reward for the production of their short film and a $2,500 scholarship fund for further film education. If you know a young visionary, point them to Kinolime.com/nxt.
We’re also launching our first international short-film competition, aimed squarely at the Bollywood market, kicking off in Q1 2026. We have received such high quality submissions from South Asia in the past, and can’t wait to read more stories from the region – because if there’s one thing Bollywood understands, it’s scale, heart, and drama done right.
And after the success of our first Shorts Competition, over 2,000 submissions and three remarkable finalists, we're doing it again. Our second Shorts Competition launches Fall 2026.
We’re working hard to bring Kinolimers helpful and intuitive tools on the website, forum, and mobile app. Our Library feature allows Kinolime to become your one-stop shop to host your portfolio, manage your projects, apply to competitions, and request coverage. We’ve also expanded our profiles to include Actors – hosting reels, sharing reads of Kinolime scripts, or simply sharing headshots could be enough to land you a role in our next production!
In 2026, we’re prioritizing scale – more competitions, big prizes, expansive community, incredible podcast guests. George Lucas famously directed Star Wars with the mantra “Faster and with more intensity!” and that worked out pretty well for him.
Our next full-feature competition also launches in early 2026. As with the ‘24 and ‘25 winners, the victorious project will be produced by Kinolime Films. Stay tuned.
On the in-house side, our amazing coming-of-age music dramedy Temple of the Dog enters production in Q1 2026, with casting already underway. Gripping South-African drama Something Like Molasses now has a director attached, and is being budgeted for a Spring 2026 shoot.
Two of our optioned screenplays from Feature competitions – psychological horror Meridian and satirical-horror Cooperville are both undergoing exciting rewrites with the aid of Kinolime’s Creative Team.
We’re also expanding into animation, with family-adventure First Cat in development, and period-piece adventure Peking to Paris undergoing animation-tailored rewrites.
With 2026 fast approaching, we have some noteworthy plans to expand features even further, such as Kinolime Theater – a new framework designed to allow users to join synchronized viewing experiences for Kinolime productions. Additionally, we’re rolling out an overhaul of image generation to produce more polished, professional looking posters for submissions, and improving the audiobook service – allowing for natural, realistic narrations and screenplays on the go!
Over the last three years, we have made production commitments, optioned screenplays, and offered cash prizes – not just to winners, but to runners-up, too. We believe in these artists and we’re only scratching the surface. It’s inspiring us all at Kinolime to see the talent, the passion, and the bravery evident in every single submission.
It’s a full slate. A crowded calendar. And exactly the kind of problem we like to have.
None of this happens without you – the writers, the voters, the believers, the people who trusted us with their work and their time. What we imagined a few years ago is no longer a pitch deck. It’s real. It’s happening. And 2026 is the year we prove it at scale.
Wishing you all a joyful holiday season, and here’s to a healthy, ambitious, and story-filled 2026.
—Oleg
