The 100 Best Indie Movies of All-Time

Ever wondered how much your life will change when faced with the reality that death is about to come? That’s normal, and not nearly as life-altering as being told you only have a few more moments to live. Because of a terminal illness, Uxbal (Javier Bardem) is driven to this situation and tries to right his wrongs in the wake of modern Barcelona. This melodrama is supercharged by Bardem’s unearthly performance as the story’s only hero, demonstrating the selfless love of a destroyed and dying father to his children – paired with cinematography unlike any other, this film is exceptionally beautiful. Directed by González Iñárritu’ (Babel, Birdman, The Revenant).

Director Wong Kar-Wai made this loose sequel to one of the best films ever made, his 2000 classic In the Mood for Love. Much of the story is set around Christmas eve.

In the far future, people take a train to the world of 2046, where no sadness or sorrow can be experienced. No one has ever returned from that world except for a lonely Japanese writer, who narrates the first part of the film.

There are four acts to the story and as is common to Wong Kar-Wai, they are listed in non-chronological order. Not that you will care but 2046 is far from confusing. Instead, it functions as a dazzling visual poem on unreciprocated love.

The story that Whale Rider tells is a familiar one: that of a young girl challenging the expectations of a patriarchal community in order to claim her rightful place in a position of authority. But this isn’t a superficial girl-power movie; writer/director Niki Caro maintains the utmost reverence for this Māori community, even if its customs might not appear fair to an outsider’s point of view. It’s a film full of realistically flawed people, whose struggles are all borne from a common love for their culture in their little corner of the world. What could have been generic and simplistic is made beautiful—especially thanks to a truly moving performance from Keisha Castle-Hughes, who at the time became the youngest nominee for the Best Actress Oscar.

Vague statement alert: Burning is not a movie that you “get”; it’s a movie you experience.

Based on a short story by Murakami, it’s dark and bleak in a way that comes out more in the atmosphere of the movie rather than what happens in the story.

Working in the capital Seoul, a young guy from a poor town near the North Korean border runs into a girl from his village. As he starts falling for her, she makes an unlikely acquaintance with one of Seoul’s wealthy youth (played by Korean-American actor Steven Yeun, pictured above.)

This new character is mysterious in a way that’s all-too-common in South Korea: young people who have access to money no one knows where it came from, and who are difficult to predict or go against.

Two worlds clash, poor and rich, in a movie that’s really three movies combined into one – a character-study, a romance, and a revenge thriller.

Sometimes, in life, we’re forced to be with people we don’t immediately get along with, like in the classroom, the workplace, or, if you’re unlucky, in a jail cell. Down by Law is black-and-white drama focused on three men in a jail cell, two of them outright hating each other, but not as much as they hate their third fellow foreign inmate for being so smiley all the time. It’s a funny adventure, made more funny as they snipe at each other, but even if the two Americans supposedly hate each other, it’s still a charming friendship that we can’t help but root for, one made simple and straightforwardly by director Jim Jarmusch.

Many films have tackled the violence of racism in the South, but none are as rich and restrained as Mudbound. The epic follows two families, the white McAllans and the black Jacksons, as they live side by side on the same parcel of land in 1940s Mississippi. The McAllans own it while the Jackons till it as sharecroppers, but the film’s story isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. The matriarchs of both families (played by Carey Mulligan and a revelatory Mary J. Blige) form a bond borne out of grief and love, the kind exclusive to mothers, while the patriarchs display different kinds of toughness. Landowner Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke) is forcibly tough while farmer and pastor Hap Jackson (Rob Morgan) is resilently tough. Then there are the younger members of the family, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) and Ronsel (Jason Mitchell), WWII survivors who are traumatized beyond repair. Both bond over the backwardness of their town, having come from a world that tore itself apart and built itself back from scratch. Mississippi, meanwhile, was frozen time. Like mud, the film sinks you in with its weighty themes, but director Dee Rees displays incredible restraint. It’s dramatic, but never overbearingly so. It’s clear-eyed but never too obvious. Most of all it’s rich—with meaning, beauty, pain, and relevance, sadly enough. It may be a period film, but it will ring true today as it rang true in 2017, when it was first released.

Boy is the highest-grossing New Zealand film of all time, and a masterpiece of compassion and good humor. Set in New Zealand’s rural East Coast in 1984, the film’s protagonist, Boy, imagines a world outside, dreaming of meeting Michael Jackson and having adventures. These fantasies serve to distract him from the sad circumstances of his life, living with his grandmother while his father serves out a prison sentence. However, adventure comes to Boy suddenly when his ex-convict father returns to find a long hidden bag of money. Written, directed, and starring Taika Waitit and featuring the new comer James Rolleston as Boy, it’s a hilarious and heartwarming tale.

A young Steve Buscemi leads this wry farce about a calamitous film set where nothing goes right. The sardonic script skewers the ins and outs of low budget film production and the various personalities on set from belligerent directors, pretentious cinematographers, and egotistic actors. 

A playful three-act structure and trips into dream sequences keep things light, while a strong supporting cast, including a cheeky appearance by Peter Dinklage and the fantastic Catherine Keener, gives the film the backbone it needs. 

Set in 1970s Italian countryside, this is a quirky movie that’s full of plot twists.

Lazzaro is a dedicated worker at a tobacco estate. His village has been indebted to a marquise and like everyone else, he works without a wage and in arduous conditions.

Lazzaro strikes a friendship with the son of the marquise, who, in an act of rebellion against his mother, decides to fake his own kidnapping. The two form an unlikely friendship in a story that mixes magical realism with social commentary.

It’s rare now to hear the phrase “girl power” without being immediately suspicious of its intentions, reduced as it were to cheesy adspeak and empty platitudes. But in the case of Rocks—a movie helmed by a predominantly female crew and co-written by the teenage cast themselves—the slogan fits. There is power in this type of girlhood: open, collaborative, and supportive, and that’s just what happens off-screen. 

On-screen, what unfolds is even more complex and beautiful. As Rocks struggles to take care of her younger brother all on her own, as she’s forced to grow up and face ethical dilemmas normally reserved for adults, she is backed unwaveringly by her friends Sumaya, Agnes, Yawa, Khadijah, and Sabina. It’s their specific bond, unsentimental but deeply considerate and loyal, that keeps the film as solid and grounded as the title suggests.