US Indies

Fresh styles and new schools of cinematic expression have the power to wake us from any cliched drama-stupor as they defiantly re-define tomorrow’s mainstream. In all their diversity Andrea Arnold, Sean Baker, Julie Bertuccelli, Lizzie Borden, Charles Burnett, Terence Davies, Cheryl Dunye, Rolf de Heer, Ira Sachs, Patrick Wang, and many, many others share the work of waking us up.

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  • Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)

    Directed by Jem Cohen • Drama • With Mary Margaret O’Hara, Robert “Bobby” Sommer, Ela Piplits • 2012 • 106 minutes

    When a Vienna museum guard befriends an enigmatic visitor, the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum becomes a mysterious crossroads which sparks explorations of their lives, the city,...

  • What Happened Was...

    Directed by Tom Noonan • Drama • With Tom Noonan, Karen Sillas • 1993 • 91 minutes

    Winner of the Grand Jury Prize and the Screenwriting Award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, WHAT HAPPENED WAS... is Tom Noonan's directorial debut; a darkly humorous take on dating dread. Featuring powerhouse p...

  • Little Sister

    Directed by Zach Clark • Drama • With Addison Timlin, Ally Sheedy, Alex Karpovsky • 2016 • 91 minutes

    Young nun Colleen (Addison Timlin) is avoiding all contact from her family, until an email from her mother (Ally Sheedy) announces, Your brother is home. On returning to her childhood home in As...

  • How He Fell in Love

    Directed by Marc Meyers • Drama • With Matt McGorry, Amy Hargreaves, Mark Blum • 2015 • 108 minutes

    Travis, a struggling young musician, crosses paths with Ellen, an older, married yoga instructor who is in the process of adopting a child. Travis and Ellen begin an affair that slowly deepens int...

  • In the Soup

    Directed by Alexandre Rockwell • Drama • With Steve Buscemi, Seymour Cassel, Jennifer Beals • 1992 • 96 minutes

    Aldolpho (Steve Buscemi) is an aspiring writer-director who can't even claim to be scraping by. No one will touch his flagrantly anti-commercial epic-length script, his acting gigs off...

  • River of Grass (Kelly Reichardt)

    Directed by Kelly Reichardt • Drama • With Lisa Donaldson, Larry Fessenden • 1995 • 81 minutes

    RIVER OF GRASS (1994), Kelly Reichardt’s darkly funny debut feature, brought the writer/director back to the setting of her adolescence, the suburban landscape of southern Florida, where she grew up wi...

  • Wendy and Lucy

    Directed by Kelly Reichardt • Drama • With Michelle Williams, Walter Dalton, Will Oldham, John Robinson, Larry Fessenden, Will Patton • 2008 • 80 minutes

    Proving why she is one of the most highly-regarded auteurs of current cinema, Kelly Reichardt's (OLD JOY) subtle storytelling technique uses a...

  • Ham on Rye

    Directed by Tyler Taormina • Drama • With Haley Bodell, Audrey Boos, Danny Tamberelli • 2020 • 85 minutes

    Ham on Rye, a coming-of-age comedy centered on the nervous excitement of youth and the strange horror of entering adulthood uses an expansive ensemble of over one hundred performers, includi...

  • We Need to Talk About Kevin

    Directed by Lynne Ramsay • Drama • With Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller • 2010 • 112 minutes

    A suspenseful and gripping psychological thriller, Lynne Ramsay’s WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN explores the fractious relationship between a mother and her evil son. Tilda Swinton, in a bracing...

  • Lyle

    Directed by Stewart Thorndike • Drama • With Gaby Hoffmann, Ingrid Jungermann • 2014 • 62 minutes

    Leah's grief over her toddler's death turns into paranoia when she begins to suspect her neighbors are part of a satanic cult. 

  • The Big Bad Swim

    Directed by Ishai Setton • Drama • With Paget Brewster, Jeff Branson, Jess Weixler • 2007 • 96 minutes

    Amy Malone (Paget Brewster) is a middle-aged calculus teacher going through a divorce. Her soon to be ex-husband, Paul, is a fellow co-worker at Old Lyme High School and under the current situa...

  • Always Shine

    Directed by Sophia Takal • Drama • With Mackenzie Davis, Caitlin FitzGerald • 2016 • 87 minutes

    Two friends, both actresses (Halt and Catch Fire’s Mackenzie Davis and Masters of Sex’s Caitlin FitzGerald), leave Los Angeles for Big Sur embarking on a weekend getaway to reconnect. Once alone, howe...

  • The Second Time Around

    Directed by Leon Marr • Drama • With Linda Thorson, Stuart Margolin • 2017 • 108 minutes

    Katherine Mitchell (Linda Thorson), a widowed yet vibrant senior, wasn't looking for love a second time - not at her age, and certainly not with grumpy Isaac Shapiro (Stuart Margolin). Despite the nosey bunc...

  • Born in Flames

    Directed by Lizzie Borden • Drama • With Honey, Adele Bertaei, Jeanne Satterfield, Flo Kennedy, Ron Vawter, Eric Bogosian • 1983 • 80 minutes

    The movie that rocked the foundations of the early indie film world, this provocative, thrilling classic is a fantasy of female rebellion set in America t...

  • What Doesn’t Float

    Directed by Luca Balser • Drama • With Pauline Chalamet, Roger Howarth, Larry Fessenden • 2023 • 69 minutes

    Seven stories. One city. A disparate group of characters fill out this darkly comedic anthology of New Yorkers at their wits end. When the dailiness of urban life is suspended by an unfore...

  • So Pretty

    Directed by Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli • Drama • With Edem Dela-Seshie, Thomas Love, Rachika Samarth • 2019 • 83 minutes

    A visiting German artist, an American academic, a millennial polyamorous enclave in New York City; director-actor Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli’s So Pretty is an excursion ...

  • Marvin, Seth and Stanley

    Directed by Stephen Gurewitz • Drama • With Alex Karpovsky, Marvin Gurewitz, Stephen Gurewitz • 2014 • 72 minutes

    Good natured Marvin summons estranged sons Seth (Alex Karpovsky), a smug careerist going through a divorce, and Stanley, a delicate aspiring actor, for a father-son bonding fishing t...

  • A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness

    Directed by Ben Rivers & Ben Russell • Drama • With Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe • 2014 • 98 minutes

    A SPELL follows an unnamed character through three seemingly disparate moments in his life. With little explanation, we join him in the midst of a 15-person collective on a small Estonian island; in i...

  • Some Divine Wind

    Directed by Roddy Bogawa • Drama • 1991 • 72 minutes

    SOME DIVINE WIND - a rough translation referring to Japanese Kamikaze pilots (on 'God's wind') - is the story of Ben, an American-born young man of mixed parentage, whose father was part of a bombing mission that destroyed his Japanese mother'...

  • You Go to My Head

    Directed by Dimitri de Clercq • Drama • With Delfine Bafort, Svetozar Cvetkovic, Arend Pinoy, Omar Sarnane, Laurence Tremolet • 2018 • 120 minutes

    This award-winning, critically lauded thriller begins in a desolate stretch of the Sahara, where a mysterious car accident leaves a young woman lost ...

  • Bad Fever

    Directed by Dustin Guy Defa • Drama • With Kentucker Audley, Eleonore Hendricks • 2012 • 77 minutes

    Alternatively quiet and delirious, always desperate, Bad Fever is a witness to one man’s broken American dream and his eternal longing to find someone, anyone, who understands or even pretends to ...

  • For the Plasma

    Directed by Bingham Bryant, Kyle Molzan • Drama • With Anabelle LeMieux, Rosalie Lowe • 2016 • 94 minutes

    For the Plasma begins in a remote house on the coast of Maine, where a young woman named Helen has found work as a forest-fire lookout responsible for monitoring the nearby woodland. While a...

  • The Winds That Scatter

    Directed by Christopher Jason Bell • Drama • 2015 • 79 minutes

    Ahmad Chahrour, in his acting debut plays a refugee from Syria that shares his name. After he loses his menial employment at a gas station, he does his best to navigate the American economy with optimism and good faith. Soon, reality...

  • The Hole Story

    Directed by Alex Karpovsky • Drama • With Alex Karpovsky • 2005 • 83 minutes

    An aspiring television producer cashes in his life savings to produce the pilot to a documentary television series, only to find himself in a battle with nature, reality and his own internal demons.