About Militia Media
We give young people heroes worth becoming.
The stories young people love shape the people they become.
Chapter one
We have a problem.
36,000
The average child will spend 36,000 hours watching entertainment screens by age 18.
17,000
Yet, they will spend only 17,000 hours of hands-on time with both parents combined by the same age.
2×
So storytellers will get twice the time with our kids that we do.
Sources: Common Sense Media; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey.
Chapter two
And there's a market.
The market
$20 billion
What churchgoing Christians spend on entertainment every year.
Zoom in
2.5%
$500 million a year. The small gold circle is all that goes to faith-based films and shows.
Zoom in again
One company
Most of that money flows through a single distribution company.
We know there's a problem.
We know there's a market.
So why do so few heroic films get made?
The answer
The impossible distribution fork.
The distribution map
The crossroads
Every heroic story starts here.
Two roads lead out of town.
Road one · Christian distribution
The buyer is 65 and in church.
Kids aren't the plan.
Road one · Christian distribution
Small audience, safe story.
Road one · Dead end
The heroic film never gets made.
Road two · Hollywood
Gatekeepers own the screens.
99.7% of their political donations fund anti-family causes.
Road two · Hollywood
Every note bends the hero.
Faith out. Agenda in.
Road two · Dead end
The heroic film never gets made.
The third road
So we paved our own.
Communities fund, screen and stream the film.
See how we did it →
Keep scrolling to travel the roads ↓
Proof
Triumph of the Heart case study.
How our militia beat Goliath.
Part one · Production
How did we do it?
The start
We started with a vision, a hero and an idea. But no money.
Shooting an international period piece for under $1 million should have been impossible. Cabrini cost about $40 million. Bonhoeffer cost about $20 million. We started with nothing.
So we turned to the militia.
They hosted, volunteered, gave us their miles, backed the film and even covered our rent.
Hosted
Proof-of-concept screenings raised $300K from 22 investors in 3 months
Volunteered
Brought in cast, crew and set volunteers
Gave miles
Flew volunteers and crew to Poland
Backed
1,119 people pledged $160K on Kickstarter, 8× the goal
Donated
Covered the director's rent when post-production ran long
The outcome
Same acclaim. A fraction of the budget.
What it cost
What critics said
Drawn to scale. Triumph of the Heart cost about 1% of Cabrini.
Rotten Tomatoes critics' score. The highest of the three.
Cabrini
~$40M
91%
Bonhoeffer
~$20M
65%
Triumph of the Heart
$440K
96%
Part two · Distribution
But we still had a problem. How do we get the film to an audience?
AMC walked away from our theatrical release.
We turned to the militia again.
They prescreened the film, raised the marketing budget, hosted screenings in their own communities and streamed the film with their schools.
Prescreened
100 screenings for 10,000 people before release
Raised
$500K from the community for marketing
Hosted
Held screenings in their own parishes, schools and homes
Streamed
Shared the film with their schools on our own streaming platform
The outcome
A movement, not a release.
1,000+
parishes, schools and homes hosted the film
100,000+
people saw Triumph of the Heart after AMC walked away
18,000+
streams on our own platform
Theaters sell vanity. The militia builds a movement.
Greenlight Young BuckThe first militia
Meet our first hero, St. Maximilian Kolbe.
Kolbe saw a need to counter the propaganda of his day. So he built a movement, one stage at a time.
- I
Vision
A Christian printing press, started by seven friars.
- II
Backing
The friars had no money. The community funded the press.
- III
Building
Kolbe built Niepokalanów, a friary made for his community.
- IV
Growth
The militia grew to 600 friars, joined by lay volunteers.
- V
Reach
His magazine reached 800,000 copies a month.
- VI
Broadcast
He launched radio broadcasts and a mission all the way to Nagasaki.
After making a film about Kolbe, we are taking his playbook to build a new movement of storytelling to save our civilization.
The team
The people behind it.
The people running Militia today.
Anthony D'Ambrosio
Founder and CEO · Director, Triumph of the Heart
Levi Keene
Chief operating officer
Mike Bianco
Chief technology officer
Joan Jopson
Chief of staff
Dawid Glinkowski
Developer and AI specialist
Stefania Elsmore
Customer specialist
Szymon Piechota
Digital marketing manager
Invitation
Help us make the next one.
We're raising to fund the films on our slate.
Get our investor deck