Focus Features

What do Lost in Translation, Brokeback Mountain, and Burn After Reading all have in common?

Focus Features, that's what. Focus Features is the arthouse arm of Universal Studios. Indie and foreign films are their jam, so Lost in Translation was right at home in their stable of smart, smaller-budget flicks.

Officially founded in 2002, Focus Features can trace its roots back to Gramercy Pictures, an arthouse film distribution label that was started in 1992. In 1999, Gramercy was gobbled up by USA Films, and, in 2002, USA Films merged with Good Machine and Universal Focus to become Focus Features. Ironically, Gramercy Pictures is now a subsidiary of Focus Features that specializes in sci-fi and horror flicks.

Mergers? Subsidiaries? Wow, the movie business really is glamorous.

Focus Features' films aren't blockbusters; they leave that to their parent company, Universal Studios, which is home to the Minions, Jurassic World, and Fast and Furious franchises. Focus Features', uh, features are award winners, and they often showcase up-and-coming talent, like, say, we don't know, a young director with only one previous film under her belt named Sofia Coppola.

We mean the director's name is Sofia Coppola, not the film's. That was clear, right?

Lost in Translation was the 7th movie distributed by Focus Features. In the decades since, they've deviated very little from their smart, diverse brand of movies by filmmakers both established and emerging, and they have the trophy case full of awards to show for it.

Must be a real pain to dust if you ask us.