Either David Kosse is rather good, or the UK independent distribution industry is rather lousy. In the less than two years since Kosse has set up and run Momentum Pictures, the company has gone from next to nothing to number three in the independent movie distribution business.

Pathé and FilmFour may have been distributing films in Britain for years, but Momentum, from a standing start, snatched a larger market share last year. Having released 15 films, including Rocky and Bullwinkle, Amélie and Get Over It, through 2001, Momentum ended up with a 3.8 per cent share of last year's total box office.

Pathé, which released 19 pictures including Enemy at the Gates, The Wedding Planner and The Score, had 3.2 per cent and FilmFour, which released 14 movies including Lucky Break and Croupier, had 0.7 per cent. (The figures are small, because the Hollywood majors take over two-thirds of the British box office.)

Kosse is another of the "Polygram boys". After Seagram took over, "it all fell to shit", and despite a subsequent grand-sounding job as chairman of Universal Pictures UK, "that became a video job and I left".

In April 2000, Kosse started work at Momentum. Originally, it was a 50-50 joint venture between the Canadian media group Alliance Atlantis, and the German movie rights business Kinowelt. As initially envisaged, both sides would put in $12.5m a year to fund film rights acquisition. But Kinowelt, like so many other hopefuls in the German movie sales and distribution business, has had an ugly ride. Alliance Atlantis now wholly owns and wholly funds Momentum. The Canadian company makes about $20m a year available to Momentum to buy films and distribute them across the UK.

Like Stewart Till (see left), who hired him into Polygram, Kosse would no doubt be delighted to attract some more money to help offset some of the costs Alliance has to shoulder. And, if Kosse has plans to expand the distribution operations outside the UK, he will need more funds - or a partner - to build out the European operating companies.

Meanwhile, an industry player could bring extra product, which means not just more theatrical distribution, but all those lucrative DVD, home video and TV rights sales. To be clear, the movie business is a criminally opaque industry. It is no surprise that power in Hollywood is measured not just by the size of your mansion, but by your lawyer.

Still, to an innocent eye, Momentum looks like an enviably healthy young business. Kosse says Alliance's pre-Momentum distribution business generated revenues of £1m in the UK in fiscal 1999. In 2000, the year it launched, Momentum racked up £7m in sales. Last year, it reported £23m back in sales and earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation of £3.5m. "We try to operate on Ebitda margins in the 20s," says Kosse.

Plenty of movie executives fancy themselves as producers, liking the idea of getting nearer the creative process. Kosse, it seems, is happy enough to keep a distance. He does not want to move Momentum to the coalface of movie production.

The former head of international marketing at Polygram says Momentum's business is "acquiring films and marketing them...I want to be a part of production, but I do not want to set up production. We co-develop."

Momentum has a development deal with Escape Artist, the producers involved with movies such as A Knight's Tale and I Know What You Did Last Summer. The company dabbled in production last year with The 51st State, the Samuel L. Jackson movie which despite very aggressive marketing failed to light up screens for long.

The core of the business is buying and marketing. When Kosse bought into Amélie at the script stage, he says he expected it might make £700,000 at the UK box office.

By the end of last year, it had made about £4.5m and rising. Perhaps a better measure of Momentum's marketing strength is Get Over It, a "hip" teen comedy which, in a crowded market, made as much of a dent on the box office as Spy Game, the Robert Redford and Brad Pitt experience.

Kosse has an eclectic taste in movie buying. Momentum has just released The Son's Room, the Nanni Moretti best picture winner at Cannes last year. It is also going to release Cross Roads, the Britney Spears road movie in which Ms Spears will no doubt do for American highways what Kerouac and Cassidy did a generation ago, but in skimpier outfits.

james.harding@ft.com

Stewart Till: a foot in both camps