LOS ANGELES – Jan. 2, 2026
A Love Letter to Cinema — in the Palm of Your Hand
In a small Los Angeles studio filled with storyboards, film posters, and scattered notebooks, Lada Egorova and Thiago Aragão sit across from each other, finishing each other’s sentences. It feels less like an interview and more like a shared reflection — two artists caught in the middle of building something bigger than themselves.
“We love cinema too much to watch it fade into content,” Lada says quietly, looking at the sunlight filtering through the blinds. “We don’t want to make things that disappear after a scroll. We want to make stories that live — the kind people return to, talk about, and share with their friends and families.”
That belief sits at the heart of Pocket Cinema, the streaming platform they co-founded — an ambitious, independent project reimagining what storytelling can be in the age of the creator economy.
“We’re indie filmmakers who grew up at the margins of the system,” Thiago says. “We’ve never cared about chasing studios. What matters to us is reaching our audience and telling the stories we believe in. Pocket Cinema is our way of creating directly for the people who love cinema, without waiting for anyone’s permission.”
Lada and Thiago watched the vertical dramas boom sweep across social media and the Los Angeles film industry. Short dramas, cliffhangers, serialized micro-stories, a global phenomenon drawing millions of views. But something was missing.
“We saw this incredible growth of vertical series, especially from Asia and the U.S.,” Thiago recalls. “But what struck us was how few of them carried real cinematic depth. There was entertainment, but rarely storytelling that made you feel something that had genre, feeling, well-developed characters.”
Lada nods. “There were so many stories being made — but few that meant something. It felt like the soul was missing. That’s when we realized there was space for something new.”
That realization became a spark. They saw an opportunity not just to ride the wave, but to redirect it — to bring elevated, genre-driven storytelling into a format often dismissed as disposable.
“We thought: what if vertical could be art? What if it could feel like cinema?” Lada says, smiling. “That’s how Pocket Cinema was born.”
Pocket Cinema’s first slate is a love letter to the genres that shaped them — a western, a sci-fi, a detective noir, an action series, and a rom-com. Each crafted with the resourcefulness and originality of indie filmmaking.
“These are the genres we grew up loving,” Thiago says. “They’re the worlds that made us fall in love with cinema and now we get to bring them into a new era.”
Lada adds, “We’re thrilled to not only tell the kind of original and daring stories that made us fall in love with film, but also to experiment with the short-series structure and the vertical format. There’s a real artistic freedom in it — a sense of discovery that Hollywood hasn’t explored yet.”
For them, this experimentation feels like a liberation.
“Filmmakers can test ideas, tones, and structures in new ways,” Lada explains. “It’s an artistic laboratory. Each short series is a test— how far can we push this format, how can we try to redefine a cinematic language with it?”
Thiago smiles. “We’re keeping some horizontal projects too. It’s not about abandoning completely the traditional cinema format — we want to expand it, giving it new shapes and new ways to breathe and thrive.”
“People think we only do vertical, but that’s not true,” Lada says. “Some stories belong in the vertical frame — they feel closer, more personal. Others need the horizon, the wideness. We do both because we respect the story. The format should never limit the emotion.”
Thiago adds, “Cinema has always evolved — from silent films to sound, black-and-white to color, analog to digital. Vertical is just another chapter. What matters is soul. Without that, it’s just pixels.”
If there’s a quiet rebellion in their work, it’s against the old hierarchies of filmmaking, the systems that decide who gets to be seen.
“Hollywood doesn’t own cinema,” Thiago says. “People do. Filmmakers do.”
Lada smiles. “That’s the beauty of this moment. We can finally be in control of our art again. The gatekeepers built walls; technology gave us a door.”
They’re not cynical about the industry, they’re simply done waiting for it. Pocket Cinema is their declaration of independence.
“We want it to be a home for filmmakers who never fit in,” Lada says. “Those who spent years on the margins of the industry making their own movies with whatever resources they had. Those who have ideas that may seem too different for the traditional system or too risky. We want them here, with us. We want to take a chance on them.”
Thiago adds, “And that’s what this short format allows us to do: it gives us the flexibility to test concepts fast and constantly adapt.”
Pocket Cinema’s mission is to bring back meaning in a culture obsessed with speed.
“Everyone’s competing for attention,” Lada says, “but attention isn’t the same as emotion. We don’t need trendy videos and stories; we need deeper ones. Even in sixty seconds, you can make someone feel something real.”
Thiago glances at his phone. “People think short-form means disposable. But it’s not. Think of poetry — it’s short, but it lasts forever. That’s how we see our shows: short, but unforgettable.”
More than a platform, Pocket Cinema aims to become a home — a global network of storytellers. The founders plan to open submissions for filmmakers around the world to partner on developing their own vertical and horizontal series, connecting artists who might otherwise never meet.
“If you love the same kind of stories, if you care about emotion and beauty — you’re already part of this movement,” Lada says.
Thiago adds, “We’re not building an app. We’re building a community of cinema lovers and storytellers.”
Pocket Cinema isn’t backed by studios or algorithms. It’s fueled by vision, defiance, and love — love for cinema, for craft, for storytelling that still believes in humanity.
“We’re not trying to compete with Hollywood,” Lada says with passion. “We’re trying to remind people why they fell in love with stories in the first place.”
Thiago leans back, reflective. “No one should have a say in what stories can or can’t be told. The freedom to create, to experiment, to fail, to grow, to express ourselves — that’s all we want. That’s what keeps cinema alive.”
Their words linger like the last shot of a film — luminous, resolute.
What they’re building goes far beyond short-form entertainment, it’s a revival of meaning, of emotion, of cinema with a soul again.
Pocket Cinema launches end of 2025.
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