Making a movie is a harder task than ever. It’s even trickier when you’re not being bankrolled by a major studio that can afford to throw tens—if not hundreds—of millions of dollars at your passion project. As a result, it’s becoming trickier to see the stuff that young indie filmmakers toil away at for barely any money. In many ways, they’re smarter than the likes of Nolan and Villeneuve, who’ve earned carte blanche status: new voices working with scraps of cash to make magic.
At this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, large swaths of the lineup had humble beginnings. From Northern Ireland to North America, France to Scotland, here are six interesting indie movies that made their mark.
Mission
12 years ago, Scottish director Paul Wright and English actor George MacKay made a brilliant, stirring film together called For Those in Peril, about a boy from a small Scottish fishing town going through severe emotional turmoil after his brother’s death. It took over a decade for Wright to make another film; Mission is that movie, and MacKay came along for round two. The protagonist he plays is Dylan—a restaurant worker in Glasgow who, disillusioned by his void-like life, makes a pact with himself to live without consequences for a week. If he finds no purpose, he’ll take his own life. The result is a furious, erratic, purposely confronting film about a man on the edge.
The State of Us
Made for £200,000 in 12 days in the English city of Bradford, this debut feature is directly inspired by the late friend of its writer and co-director. We meet Frankie (Samuel Bottomley) as he’s trying to break into the hospice where his best mate Taylor (Callum Scott Howells) is sleeping. Taylor has terminal cancer, and this might be his last chance to experience real fun and freedom, so Frankie cracks him out of his hospital room and the pair spend one final night together, hitting the town, getting pissed, and reminiscing on their friendship. It’s a touching film about the fullness of life, no matter how short it is, and how your mates are your greatest rock.
I Want Your Sex
Gregg Araki’s movie, in North American cinemas already and coming to the UK very soon, features incredible sponcon. Olivia Wilde’s dominatrix artiste character asks her submissive assistant, played by Cooper Hoffman, if he “wants a Spindrift?” before placing the can of seltzer, logo forward, in the front of the frame. It’s a perfect example of indie moviemaking’s mild compromises, integral to getting a film like this made: a naughty, uncompromising, and silly ode to Gen Z’s sexless pivot.
Skintown
Northern Ireland, 1994. The nothing-y town of Enniskillen. On the night of a ceasefire between the IRA and the British army, best mates Vinny and Jonty band together in their beat-up motor and head to a rave. They want to blow off steam, sure, but it could also make them rich, thanks to the ton of ecstasy tablets they plan to sell. It’s their opportunity to escape the shitty situation that is the British Army-plagued hometown they grow up in, but as they soon realize, the feeling of entrapment is a frontier-free feeling.
Pretty Babies
We have a much more in-depth review of this Edinburgh Film Festival stand out here, but this movie—from the godmothers of independent cinema, Killer Films—is a worthy and interesting addition to the lineage of cool American movies. It follows a pair of friends who leave their boring life behind to become Hollywood starlets, only to get wrapped up in sex work on the journey. Like many of the films we saw at Edinburgh, a great film about pairs of lost people facing the big, wide world.
Goodbye Cruel World
Felix de Givry’s sometimes sullen, sweet, and dreamy project is a perfect film about teenage malaise. Otto is 14, and having been bullied by his high school friends, writes a suicide note and sends a copy of it to his entire class. He disappears, but when a girl from his class spots him lurking in the woods of his town, a new and mysterious relationship forms.
