U.S. 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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  • 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.

  • Happer's Comet

    Directed by Tyler Taormina • Drama • With Grace Berlino, Michael Gugliamo • 2022 • 62 minutes

    Following his acclaimed debut HAM ON RYE, Tyler Taormina’s hypnotic follow-up is a midnight mosaic that reveals a suburban town steeped in alienation. It’s the middle of the night, but things are far fr...

  • Lenz

    Directed by Alexandre Rockwell • Drama • With Alexander Alexeieff, Kim Marie Radonovich • 1982 • 92 minutes

    An adaptation of George Buchner's novella, "Lenz", chronicling the poet Jakob Lenz's slide into insanity and madness. The setting is transposed from 18th century Germany to New York in the...

  • She's Lost Control

    Directed by Anja Marquardt • Drama • With Brooke Bloom, Marc Menchaca • 2014 • 90 minutes

    Fiercely independent, Ronah works as a sexual surrogate in New York City, teaching her clients the very thing they fear most – to be intimate. Her life unravels when she starts working with a volatile new c...

  • Cane River

    Directed by Horace B. Jenkins • Drama • With Tommye Myrick, Richard Romain, Carol Sutton • 1982 • 104 minutes

    Written, produced, and directed by Emmy Award-winning documentarian, Horace B. Jenkins, and crafted by an entirely African American cast and crew, CANE RIVER is a racially-charged love s...

  • Keep the Lights On (Ira Sachs)

    Directed by Ira Sachs • Drama • With Thure Lindhardt, Zachary Booth; Julianne Nicholson • 2012 • 106 minutes

    Keep the Lights On chronicles an emotionally and sexually charged journey of two men in New York City through love, friendship, and addiction. Documentary filmmaker Erik (Thure Lindhardt)...

  • Bless Their Little Hearts

    Directed by Billy Woodberry • Drama • With Nate Hardman, Kaycee Moore • 1983 • 80 minutes

    Searching for steady work, Charlie (Nate Hardman) views his chronic unemployment as a kind of spiritual trial. But selling a few catfish can’t sustain a family of five while his wife, Andais (Kaycee Moore)...

  • Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell)

    Directed by John Cameron Mitchell • Drama • With Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Justin Vivian Bond • 2006 • 101 minutes

    NSFW. Contains nudity and graphic depictions of sex.

    John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS explores the lives of several emotionally challenged characters as they navigate the comic an...

  • The Midnight Swim

    Directed by Sarah Adina Smith • Drama • With Lindsay Burdge, Jennifer Lafleur, Aleksa Palladino • 2014 • 84 minutes

    Spirit Lake is unusually deep. No diver has ever managed to find the bottom, though many have tried. When Dr. Amelia Brooks disappears during a deep-water dive, her three daughters...

  • The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

    Directed by David Russo • Drama • With Marshall Allman, Jeanette Maus • 2009 • 97 minutes

    After losing his cubicle job as a data manager in Seattle, spiritually confused Dory feels like his life is going down the drain. He plummets from white collar to brown collar when he is forced to take a jo...

  • Ape

    Directed by Joel Potrykus • Drama • With Joshua Burge, Gary Bosek, Daniel Falicki • 2013 • 86 minutes

    Trevor Newandyke is a struggling comedian and a pyromaniac. Not only does he bomb on stage, but he bombs in everyday life. He's fed up with threats from the cable company, Slurpee price hikes an...

  • Redlegs

    Directed by Brandon Harris • Drama • With Andrew Katz, Evan Louison, Nathan Ramos • 2012 • 67 minutes

    A comedic drama set amongst grieving twenty-something man-boys in the industrial Midwest whose black friend was recently murdered in a historically troubled part of Cincinnati, Ohio.

  • The Color Wheel

    Directed by Alex Ross Perry • Drama • With Alex Ross Perry, Carlen Altman • 2012 • 83 minutes

    The Color Wheel is the story of JR, an increasingly transient aspiring news-anchor, as she forces her disappointing younger brother Colin (Alex Ross Perry) to embark on a road trip to move her belonging...

  • The Taqwacores

    Directed by Eyad Zahra • Drama • With Bobby Naderi, Noureen DeWulf, Dominic Rains • 2010 • 83 minutes

    Yusef, a first-generation Pakistani engineering student, moves off-campus with a group of Muslim punks in Buffalo, New York. His new “unorthodox” housemates soon introduce him to Taqwacore - a h...

  • The Annotated Field Guide of Ulysses S. Grant

    Directed by Jim Finn • Documentary • 2020 • 61 minutes

    For four years in the 1860’s half of the United States was held hostage by an unrecognized white supremacist republic. Shot on 16mm in national military parks, swamps, forests and the suburban sprawl across the former battlefields, the film ...

  • La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo

    Directed by Jim Finn • Documentary • 2007 • 60 minutes

    La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo is a recreation of one day at the Canto Grande prison in Peru, following women guerrillas from the Maoist Shining Path movement in their morning marches to their bedtime chants. Kept isolated in t...

  • Stinking Heaven

    Directed by Nathan Silver • Drama • With Hannah Gross, Keith Poulson • 2015 • 70 minutes

    Married couple Jim and Lucy (Keith Poulson, Deragh Campbell) run a commune in the early 90's for sober living out of their suburban New Jersey home. The motley members eat, bathe and work together selling ho...

  • Exit Elena

    Directed by Nathan Silver • Drama • With Kia Davis, Cindy Silver, Nathan Silver • 2017 • 72 minutes

    With no place to call home, 19-year-old Elena takes a job as a live-in aide. She finds herself thrust into the middle of a family in crisis: all the things that go on between a father, grandmother...

  • August at Akiko's

    Directed by Christopher Makoto Yogi • Drama • With Alex Zhang Hungtai, Akiko Masuda • 2019 • 75 minutes

    Armed with just his suitcase and a sax, cosmopolitan musician Alex Zhang Hungtai (from the band Dirty Beaches) returns home to the Big Island of Hawaii having been away for nearly a decade. Hu...

  • California Dreams

    Directed by Mike Ott • Documentary • With Cory Zacharia, Kevin Giller, Patrick Llaguno, Carolan J. Pinto, Neil Harley • 2017 • 83 minutes

    CALIFORNIA DREAMS presents five unique individuals in pursuit of a big life dream. Through auditions set up in small towns across Southern California, the fil...

  • Littlerock

    Directed by Mike Ott • Drama • With Atsuko Okatsuka, Cory Zacharia, Rintaro Sawamoto, Roberto 'Sanz' Sanchez • 2010 • 83 minutes

    Vacationing Japanese siblings (Atsuko Okatsuka, Rintaro Sawamoto) become stranded in a California desert town, but soon warm up to life in the dusty burg.

    "Littlerock...

  • Sun Don't Shine

    Directed by Amy Seimetz • Drama • With Kate Lyn Sheil, Kentucker Audley • 2013 • 80 minutes

    Written and directed by Amy Seimetz, Sun Don't Shine follows Crystal and her boyfriend Leo on a tense and mysterious road trip through hauntingly beautiful landscape of central Florida. The purpose of the...

  • My Brother's Wedding

    Directed by Charles Burnett • Drama • With Everett Silas, Jessie Holmes, Gaye Shannon-Burnett, Ronnie Bell • 1983 • 86 minutes

    In 1983, after many long months of shooting, Charles Burnett sent his rough-cut of My Brother’s Wedding to his producers. Ignoring his request to finish the editing of t...