Justifying Sales Data Tools/Retainers for Indie Films: A Budget Question

Hey everyone,

I'm Noah, a motion graphics artist, and I've been wrestling with a real dilemma. I recently finished a short film, a passion project I poured a lot of my own resources into. Now that it's done, I'm trying to figure out the best way to get it out there. I've looked into festivals, and even considered reaching out to distributors directly.

However, I keep seeing tools like Vitrina AI mentioned, or hearing about sales agents who require a retainer fee upfront. As an independent filmmaker, my budget for this project is basically non-existent post-production. It’s hard enough to scrape together festival submission fees. How can a filmmaker on a shoestring budget realistically justify spending potentially hundreds or thousands on these kinds of data tools or sales agent retainers? Does the potential return truly outweigh that initial significant cost for an unknown, first-time indie feature or short? I'm genuinely trying to understand the math here.