While Los Angeles has emerged as the center of the vertical storytelling boom, Torres saw an opening to establish New York as the format's next major hub.

For decades, the film festival circuit has been built around a familiar ritual. Audiences gather in dark theaters to discover the next breakout feature, filmmaker or cinematic movement. Pete Torres believes the next evolution of that experience may arrive in an entirely different format.

After years helping oversee the Tribeca Festival as chief operating officer, Torres is now leading Alza Festival, a new New York event dedicated exclusively to vertical microdramas. The festival arrives at a moment when short-form scripted content has exploded across mobile platforms, transforming what many once viewed as a niche format into a rapidly expanding business with creators, studios and dedicated audiences around the world.

For Torres, the decision to build Alza in New York was driven as much by opportunity as geography.

“When I went out to L.A., it was just everywhere,” Torres says. “There were studios popping up. Everyone had an app. There were actors everywhere, moving scripts and moving ideas. Every actor I met was talking about the volume of work they had, which they hadn’t had in a bit.”

While Los Angeles has emerged as the center of the vertical storytelling boom, Torres saw an opening to establish New York as the format’s next major hub.

Working alongside New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, Alza has launched its “Created in New York” initiative, designed to spotlight local writers, actors and creators while awarding one project with a Made in New York distinction.

The broader goal is to ensure the city’s creative community has a direct entry point into an industry that has largely flourished elsewhere.

“It’s all for the vertical community,” Torres says. “We’ll continue to assist and announce different layers of this program for the next year.”

The festival’s submission pool already reflects how quickly the format has expanded beyond its earliest markets. While many projects still originate in Los Angeles, Torres says entries have also arrived from Chile, India and Nigeria, alongside creators from across the United States.

“What we’re seeing is that it’s being created globally,” he says. “It’s coming to the United States and growing fast.”

That international momentum is one reason Torres believes the festival should remain platform agnostic. Rather than centering individual apps or distributors, Alza is designed around the people creating the stories.

“It’s all about bringing the entire ecosystem together, creators, studios, platforms, brands, investors, talent, and audiences. Creators are at the heart of that ecosystem” he says. “Having them meet and connect and meet a company, another producer, another writer or something that they could work together and continue their journey along this path of helping build this industry.”

That creator-first philosophy also reflects how Torres believes entertainment itself has changed.

“I think it’s always, look, creatives are the backbone of everything,” he says. “Technology, mobile technology and all this, while filmmaking technology has lowered the barrier, you can actually deal with the creators.”

Where traditional filmmaking once relied on studios, distributors and long development pipelines, vertical storytelling has dramatically shortened the distance between creator and audience.

“The creators have the ability to engage directly with audiences and not having to go through the old system,” Torres says. “If you invest in yourself and you take a shot, you have the ability to meet the audiences.”

For many observers, however, one question still lingers. How do you successfully premiere content designed to be watched on a smartphone inside a movie theater?
Torres argues that the answer has less to do with the screen and more to do with the audience.

“What we’re going to do is there’ll be a red carpet,” he explains. “The talent, the showrunners will all walk there. They’ll be covered by traditional media and also the new media people.”

Following each screening, audiences will participate in live Q&A sessions with actors, directors and showrunners, transforming the experience into something that cannot be replicated at home.

“They get to ask some real time questions,” Torres says. “‘Why did you do this? What’s your next project?’ They get to engage with people in real time.”

For Torres, that interaction is what separates a festival from simply watching content on a device.

“People can watch content anywhere today. What they can’t recreate is the experience of watching it together, laughing, crying, and connecting with the creators behind it.,” he says,

“It’s like community building in real life. The more a phone takes over, the more you need connection.”

That philosophy echoes lessons Torres witnessed during his years at Tribeca, where conversations, networking and shared discoveries often became just as memorable as the films themselves.

“I want to do what Tribeca has successfully done its entire run,” he says. “Build industry community where people come together.”

Alongside screenings, Alza will feature masterclasses, industry panels and networking events intended to bring together creators, agents, casting directors and executives as the vertical industry continues to mature.

Torres believes those conversations will become increasingly important as the format evolves beyond romance dramas into comedy, horror and franchise storytelling.

“I only see it growing and becoming another tool of telling stories,” he says. “Prequels, everything. It’s beyond what you could think right now.”

He points to companion content and expanded universes as one area where vertical storytelling could comfortably coexist with traditional film and television, offering audiences additional context while creating new opportunities for performers and writers.

“It’s part of the ecosystem already,” Torres says. “It’s only going to grow.”

He also expects traditional film festivals to eventually embrace the format through dedicated programming strands. Alza’s distinction, he argues, is that vertical storytelling is not an addition to a larger event. It is the main attraction.

“The difference about Alza is it is only about vertical content,” he says. “They’ll be the star of this festival.”

As production continues to spread beyond California, Torres also sees significant potential for New York and the broader tri-state region.

“It’s everything is about opportunity,” he says. “This has given everyone, every actor, an opportunity to act or write or produce.”

He believes the region’s infrastructure, tax incentives and creative talent will accelerate that growth over the coming year, particularly as more studios and production companies establish themselves on the East Coast.

“I think by December you’ll see a bunch of vertical content coming from the East Coast quickly.”

For Torres, however, success will ultimately be measured less by submission numbers than by the connections formed during the festival itself.

“I really want to get the story out about us,” he says. “We want to be that platform for people to convene and get together.”

His hope is that new partnerships, productions and careers begin inside Alza’s theaters, just as countless independent films have found their footing through festivals before them.

“Hopefully,” Torres says, “some vertical show will launch from here. Some actor will find a producer to work with or a company that’s going to help them on their journey.”

For a storytelling format built on individual screens, Torres is betting its next chapter begins by bringing everyone into the same room.