How Rooney Mara Drama ‘La Cocina’ Marks a Big Leap for Socially Conscious Production and Distribution Shingle Willa

Elizabeth Woodward saw an opportunity in the indie film market and ran with it. The founder and CEO of production shingle and distributor Willa is poised to break into bigger endeavors with Alonso Ruizpalacios’ “La Cocina,” which it will release Oct. 25 in New York and Los Angeles. The film then opens in top 10 markets on Nov. 1 and rolls out nationwide Nov. 8 in over 75 markets.

The film embodies Willa’s mission of finding great material with a social conscience and tailoring the release strategy to not only bring in audiences but really reach them through events around the film. With “La Cocina,” which played in the Berlinale competition, that strategy entails an urgency spurred by the current election campaigns, from the presential race to races on local levels.

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Woodward strives to make films that move audiences, and because she came into the industry during a time of change and transition, “I’ve always had to balance pursuing the traditional pathways and understanding the ways of the major players, while simultaneously always trying to avoid getting stuck in red tape and navigating to find ways forward.”

For example, Willa distributed “You Resemble Me,” which premiered in Venice, in 2023. The film explored radicalization and followed the true story of a woman who was falsely accused of being Europe’s first female suicide bomber. It won many awards, connected strongly with audiences and listed Spike Lee, Spike Jones, Riz Ahmed, Claire Denis and Alma Har’el as exec producers. But Woodward says the distribution offers they got “felt like more of a burial than a release. And I realized that the marketplace wasn’t just failing us, it was failing a lot of our contemporary filmmakers. So we realized we needed to take things into our own hands, because we didn’t want to be another original, breakthrough film that was cut off at the starting gate.”

Woodward deepened her relationship with the director as well as her knowledge of the film and its world and who would want to see it.

“We reached out to aligned philanthropic stakeholders, some of whom had funded the film, because our funding was a combination of philanthropy and investment, and some who were interested in the conversations that the film would bring about, and really focused our distribution strategy around the impact questions that were raised by the film.”

That was the starting point. It played in 85 U.S. markets for the theatrical release, and struck distribution deals and screened all over the world, and reached over 62 million people on social media.

Willa staged “pay what you can” screenings for the film, which generated healthy revenue, even more than traditional ticket sales, she notes.

The alternative distribution strategies that are now part of the Willa model, such as “collaboration with the filmmakers in a limited way, harnessing the energy of impact campaigns to inform the distribution plan, being brave with experimentation and doing targeted audience engagement.”

While participating in the Sundance Catalyst Fellowship earlier this year, Woodward says, “I really had the time to break down what the Willa model is and what the business plan is and what the business model is.” And she credits working with the catalyst community as being pivotal “in the launch of Willis distribution division, kind of more formally.”

Her key is to combine business and philanthropy. “So what I realized is independent film already looks to philanthropy for development, production, artist, support and impact campaigns. But why are we stopping short a distribution if that’s the way that the film is actually going to get seen? Philanthropy is already supporting the creation of these stories in order to affect change. But for that change, that change is dependent on the films being seen.”

She continues, “What I also recognized from the case studies of the releases that we had done is that philanthropic funding de-risks and enables the kind of creative experimentation and approaches that we at Willa believe are essential in this moment of marketplace transition, so that we can find the path to sustainability for independent films.”

What that means is that they can try out different strategies “because the philanthropic funding that is supporting the film in the first place is interested in the broader independent film ecosystem…. So the way that that works is that Willa is a fiscally sponsored LLC, so we can receive philanthropic contributions towards our activities that generate impact and are not directly revenue generating as their primary point, and then the investment portion supports marketing-focused expenditure on the distribution side, and then a very lean overhead.”

“La Cocina,” which stars Raúl Briones and Rooney Mara, is a bracing and hard look at a large touristy restaurant in Times Square called The Grill. The bustling eatery employs many undocumented workers, including Pedro (Briones), a talented chef who nevertheless is held back by his undocumented status. While front of the house is almost exclusively white women, the back of the house takes in all colors, and exploitation is the name of management’s game.

“I was a huge fan of Alonso. I really loved his past work, and the film kind of came across my radar and felt like a perfect fit for the model because it’s not only artistically an excellent movie that has a real spark, but it’s such a powerful engine for raising awareness and shifting perspectives about restaurant workers labor rights and the rights of undocumented immigrants,” says Woodward.

After Willa acquired the rights, they worked closely with Ruizpalacios. “Part of the Willa process is filmmaker empowerment in the distribution process, putting filmmakers at the center in a limited, focused way to allow them to be part of the customization of the release, and providing an artist support grant so that they can spend that time doing it, and it’s a very limited amount of time, but we really worked with Alonso to discuss what his reason was for making the film, what his ambitions were, what kind of audience engagement or impact or activist partnerships he would be excited about,” says Woodward.

The filmmaker shared that he was inspired not only by the play “The Kitchen” by Arnold Wesker but also by his time as a dishwasher at the Rainforest Cafe in London. “There’s a whole genre of border-crossing films,” she says, “but [Ruizpalacios] was more interested in what happens once you’ve made it [here], and what does life look like, and what are the challenges and hopes in that next phase?”

From there, the Willa team developed an audience engagement impact campaign. “The concept was really focusing on labor rights for restaurant workers and particularly undocumented workers. So we partnered with One Fair Wage, which is a national organization working to reform the sub-minimum wage and improve wages for restaurant workers, many of whom are undocumented and many of whom are people of color, to raise awareness about the issues, but also celebrate restaurant workers. Because what’s beautiful about the film is it affords such a nuanced and deep humanity to people who we often don’t get to see their stories and the kind of depths of their lives.”

Willa has “secured a billboard in Times Square via a nonprofit program that some of the billboard owners have, which is amazing,” she notes, adding that they have created a video spot using images from the film and real restuarant workers from the One Fair Wage network. They are also hosting a celebration ct. 28 in Times Square with the org. “There’s going to be special awards like rent vouchers and continued education scholarships that One Fair Wage has been able to pull together. And the billboard will show for 30 seconds, 200 times a day for nine days.”

Will and One Fair Wage have also organized screenings of the film and press conferences around the country for restaurant workers and activists.

“And we also organized U.S. Mexico border premier in Laredo, Texas, with a lot of local stakeholders, a city councilwoman who’s very engaged on the issues, and celebrity undocumented chef Cristina Martinez, who was an episode of ‘Chef’s Table.’” adds Woodward.

Willa recently produced Alexandra Simpson’s “No Sleep Till,” which premiered in Venice Critics’ week and won a special mention prize there. It’s entertaining distribution offers.

“The important things to deliver on the investment side is working out how to generate revenue for these films, and on the kind of philanthropic impact side, figure out, how do we quantify and qualify either the film’s specific impact or the ecosystem impact that our work is putting forward,” Woodward says. “So I feel positive, and I think it’s about being strategic and very thoughtful and really analyzing what each film demands and what the right plan and budget and approach is, because it is absolutely a time that that demands really rigorous interrogation about all decisions and a lot of elbow grease, too.”