Milestone was founded in 1990 in New York City by Dennis Doros and Amy Heller, who had both worked in the film restoration and distribution industries.
Prominent supporters such as Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme have presented Milestone's film releases in the past.
[2] Milestone has distributed the works of Alfred Hitchcock, Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, F.W.
Murnau, Orson Welles, Margot Benacerraf, Shirley Clarke, Lionel Rogosin, Mikhail Kalatozov, Luis Buñuel, Takeshi Kitano, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Alan Berliner, Charles Burnett, Eleanor Antin, Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, George T. Nierenberg, Kathleen Collins, Ayoka Chenzira, Erich von Stroheim and Philip Haas, among many others.
Thought lost for many years, the original materials surfaced in the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research archives.