Must-watch Indie films to help you make a powerful start to 2024
Throughout 2023, several independent films stood out for their compelling plots and talented performances. And thanks to OTT platforms, you get to watch most of them from the comfort of your home. Here’s our list of must-watches.
While independent films have always made a splash at film festivals, streaming platforms have made them even easier to access.
A year of consumption, 2023 saw a global surge in the time people spent watching films and series. As OTT platforms further democratised access to a variety of content, cutting through language, culture and regional borders, independent cinema has grown on movie buffs everywhere.
While heartfelt, script-backed indies featuring established actors and even relatively less exposed talent finding more takers in viewers, here are our top picks among the ones released this year to make this December both entertaining and introspective.
Flora and Son
On Apple TV +
This Dublin musical pop-drama, featuring Eve Hawson establishes her potential as a cinema star. Hawson is the star of Behind Her Eyes on Netflix, and Bono’s daughter. As a single mother who is a study in contradictions with her attempted sincere parenting, and drunken, sordid late night pick ups from dank night clubs, the film invokes 90s nostalgia.
John Carney makes yet another film about the bonds music can build and the role it plays in displaying a real-like, flawed but lovable character on screen. Flora is coping with the duties of mothering her teenage son who is turning out to be disobedient and near-delinquent. She works as a nanny and is in the midst of divorcing a hot, irresponsible singer.
To find commonalities and form a bond with her son, she decides to learn the guitar and teach him singing and songwriting that goes beyond computer-mixed tracks. Her teacher is a relic of the past, a 70s-style singer and songwriter who teaches the guitar on Zoom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). While she reconnects with the guitar, she discovers herself, finds a connection with her teacher and builds empathy for her son. This is a musical drama and a woman’s growing up tale set in an easy-to-relate setting.
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Kill Bokson
On Netflix
This is a mother-daughter assassin action drama reminiscent of the intensity and slickness of the John Wick franchise. Kill Boksoon is about a top-notch female assassin Gil Bok-Soon, seeking to build an affectionate bond with her daughter Gil Jae-Young. She is a single mother who likes to keep her aggression and efficiency away from home. But, her daughter is distant and reluctant to open up to her mom.
Working at an agency that has murderers on hire on its roster, Gil inspires envy and awe amongst her peers for her ability to deliver results. Only one job goes wrong and puts her on the wrong side of her boss. The rest of the film is about her surviving and ultimately finding a connection with her daughter.
Starring Jeon Do-Yeon and Kim Si-A, this is a stylish action viewing experience where each sequence offers innovative fighting and classic East Asia. Call it the Halyu wave or the mastery of South Koreans to keep churning out universally entertaining content, this drama blends ordinary emotions and parenting challenges with extraordinary fights very well.
Sharper on Apple TV+
Sharper
On Apple TV +
Sharper is packed with surprises, twists, and turns that don’t add up to a lot but make for an intriguing ride while watching. Featuring Julianne Moore, John Lithgow, Sebastian Stan and Brianna Middleton, the film begins as an easy romantic drama till it opens up and shows its soul as a complicated con flick.
Each character is lying, hiding something and trying to get something for themselves in a dubious manner. While watching each actor play their parts, trying to understand what they might be up to is a fun guessing game. A commentary on the sheer nature of greed and avarice, the central premise lies in conning billionaires and the super-rich of Manhattan, New York.
However, it kickstarts in a totally out-of-character setting—in a bookshop. Sharper might not have the sharpest conclusion, but it packs unpredictability. Moore and Lithgow are very good but Middleton is brilliant.
Sharper on Apple TV+
Past Lives
Lionsgate Play
Among all the films listed here, Past Lives is the most touching and romantic—an achingly melancholic drama. An impressive debut from writer-director Celine Song, it transcends space and time to bring together star-crossed people who are not in love anymore, but unknowingly yearn for a pure and innocent connection from their past.
The film opens with a catch-up among friends at a bar and circles back to this point to separate their present experiences from their past connections. Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) is South Korean; his childhood sweetheart and current friend Nora (Greta Lee) is a Korean-Canadian migrant and their friend Arthur is Jewish American (John Magaro).
Life’s larger decisions separate Nora (then Na in her native country) and Hae for decades. They remain connected via video calls and Skype but their lives shape into different identities. It’s a gap they cannot bridge even though their affection for each other remains strong and their interest in other people is not as powerful.
Past Lives looks at the evolution of people in relationships in the void- that practical choices and time apart- can bring. It is a tender story that everyone can relate to.
Hunger
Netflix
Films from Thailand are few but the ones that get made stand out. And a film about chefs and food set in Bangkok is a delicious concept. But Hunger on Netflix is so much more—touching upon class conflict and economic status, which leads to a stratified society cooked up in the high-pressure lives of chefs.
A young girl, the family’s eldest, Aoy (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, also known as Aokbab) has to labour away at their family restaurant to keep bringing in income. She aspires to greater things as a chef. So, when a chance to enter a competition from the country’s top celebrity chef comes up, she jumps at the opportunity. Only the man at the centre of this much-hyped event is difficult, contemptuous, and prejudiced.
His responses are beastly and his humble origins are dwarfed before his ego as he cooks for the ‘elite’- which can include criminals and undesirables that have hit the jackpot. Aoy gives up when the going gets ugly but develops a close friendship and discovers an opportunity to turn the tables. In a contest of sorts, the student and teacher have to compete to come up with a piece de resistance.
As food inspires great TV and a quality drama like The Bear, Hunger takes it a notch ahead. This is a psychological drama-thriller and is filmed like an intense thriller. Watch and savour.
Cassandro
Prime Video
Gael Garcia Bernal is the unofficial superstar of independent world cinema, having spawned this space with his outstanding films over two decades. In Cassandro, he proves that his poignant blend of vulnerability with flamboyance is unmatched. This is a colourful story about Saul Armendariz, a gay wrestler who broke into the male-ego-led world of Mexican professional wrestling, Lucha Libre, in the 80s.
He faces struggles because of his sexual identity, which makes him vulnerable to jeers, humiliation and rejection from the big league of wrestling. Only when his manager inspires him to embrace his homosexuality and create a new identity, he creates a character—Cassandro—to conquer. Over time, as he becomes successful in the sport and famous outside of it, he grows to become an LGBTQIA+ icon.
But it is the character’s inner journey that makes for empathetic viewing in this story. Fame and success do not insulate him from jeers and hurtful comments from his competitors or other ‘macho’ men. It also does not end problems for his single mother and him nor does it end the violence that can still befall him. Bernal makes this flawed and impulsive character likeable in a film that has an important story to tell.
You Hurt My Feelings
Prime Video
Julia-Louis Dreyfuss is Veep, making you laugh where you want to scream (silently) or squirm. She is also a Seinfeld veteran. When she tackles the role of a married author who is disappointed by her husband’s visibly safe lie, she owns this part completely. Directed by Nicole Holofcener, who makes nuanced character-driven films that understand the nuances of a woman’s mind so well, You Hurt My Feelings is heartfelt.
It is also a close look at the complexities of navigating married life and managing a family, with the seemingly minor trade-offs and compromises that add up to a sense of loss sometimes. With Tobias Menzies playing her husband and cracking the difficulties that men in his position face, this is a perfect popcorn drama that will leave the viewer introspecting. It is a testament to the fact that a good actor, in this case, Dreyfuss, can tackle any part that is written well and rooted in lived experiences.
Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta