17 Indie Films You Must See in 2024

Navigating the Sundance Film Festival can be a tricky endeavor. The stacked screening schedule is practically made to send cinephiles into a tailspin: If the line for the new Steven Soderbergh movie starts forming at 9 p.m., but a nifty-sounding documentary is playing across town at six, can you make it to both? Is it better to go for the crowd-pleaser or for the polarizing experience? Which of the 91 films selected will become this year’s Past Lives?

As always, Sundance’s slate of independent films from emerging artists and established auteurs alike made any stress worthwhile. The festival’s 2024 edition—its 40th—offered both in-person and online screenings, but many of its most noteworthy selections could be seen only in Park City, Utah. As a result, every theater seemed to vibrate with an anticipatory energy—and whenever a film connected with the audience, that energy crescendoed into a collective, can-you-believe-we’re-back awe. Of the dozens of movies my colleague David Sims and I watched, the following 17 stood out the most. (We’ve noted which films have secured a distributor and announced release dates.)

Love Lies Bleeding (A24, in theaters March 8)

Kristen Stewart in a mullet. Ed Harris in, um, whatever you want to call this. The Saint Maud writer-director Rose Glass’s new film isn’t all about the actors’ wonky haircuts, yet it does offer an audaciously shaggy vision of ’80s Americana. Set in a seedy New Mexico town in 1989, the movie follows the courtship of the gym manager Lou (played by Stewart) and Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a bodybuilder. Their relationship leads to a gruesome crime that makes them the targets of Lou’s bloodthirsty father, Lou Sr. (Harris), and what happens next is propulsive, twisty, and deliriously sexy: Bullets fly. Muscles pop. Bodies get dumped in the back of pickup trucks. Although the film occasionally struggles to contain its overstuffed plot, Glass’s stylish direction—which perhaps benefits from an English filmmaker picturing a bygone American era—makes for an invigorating spectacle best seen on a massive screen with a rowdy crowd.  — S. L.

Girls State (Apple TV+, streaming April 5)

A documentary about Gen Z contending with the divisiveness of American politics may sound like a difficult watch during an election year, but the filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine know what they’re doing. Girls State, like their previous film, Boys State, is an absorbing account of the titular program for high schoolers: Over the course of a week, teenage participants elect officers, facilitate debates, and issue rulings in a mock government. But Girls State, given its subjects’ gender, goes beyond the partisan attitudes shaping young people’s identities; it considers how the simple fact of femininity affects the way one’s goals, beliefs, and potential as a leader are perceived. Filmed just weeks before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Girls State offers a timely reminder that, come November, the results affect many more people than those old enough to vote. (Laurene Powell Jobs, the president of Emerson Collective, which is the majority owner of The Atlantic, is one of the film’s executive producers.)  — S. L.

Dìdi (弟弟) (Focus Features)

As much as it pains me to call Sean Wang’s directorial debut a period piece, his charming, semi-autobiographical film is so strong in part because it’s set in 2008. Dìdi follows Chris Wang (played by newcomer Izaac Wang), a Taiwanese American 13-year-old dealing with the woes of nascent social media while facing a classic teenage conundrum: How is he supposed to fit in and stand out? Chris can’t even decide what people should call him. To his childhood friends, he’s “Wang-Wang.” To his family—including his overburdened mother, Chungsing (the wonderful Joan Chen)—he’s “dìdi,” or “little brother” in Chinese. And though he could easily lean in to being Asian, the most obvious characteristic about him, he bristles at the label. Dìdi tackles weighty questions about cultural identity with a light touch, ensuring plenty of laughs—or, for Millennial viewers who remember the halcyon days of Facebook, cringe-laughs—amid its poignant truths.  — S. L.

My Old Ass (Amazon MGM)

Coming-of-age dramedies are a Sundance staple, but My Old Ass has to be the first one to include time travel, a Justin Bieber dance break, and a wall of Saoirse Ronans (you’ll see). But within that daffiness is a heartfelt core. The writer-director Megan Park’s second feature follows an 18-year-old named Elliott (Maisy Stella), who meets her older self (Aubrey Plaza, a total hoot) while high on mushrooms. You can probably tell where this is going—Elliott thinks she has her future all figured out, while Older Elliott knows better—but Park’s script is packed with richly observed revelations about the necessity of growing pains, as well as youthful, rat-a-tat dialogue that never sounds forced. Stella, too, is a star to watch, producing a fine-tuned performance as a teenager interrogating her sexuality, her dreams, and her bonds with her friends and family. Take it from my old ass: This film’s a gem, no matter your age. — S. L.

Presence (Neon)

Leave it to Steven Soderbergh to arrive at the festival with something completely fresh. The prolific, definitely not retired filmmaker who arguably turned Sundance into a pivotal stop for indie artists with the premiere of Sex, Lies, and Videotape in 1989 has returned with another bold entry in his oeuvre. His latest follows a dysfunctional family (the parents are played by Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan) as they move into their new home and encounter something watching them closely. Soderbergh’s direction is characteristically striking, slyly delivering clues for the viewer to better grasp the mystery at the story’s center, while David Koepp’s sharp script offers setups or payoffs to the action in every scene. If all of that sounds rather opaque, it’s because you should go into Presence with as few details as possible. Just know that it’s a ghost story crossed with a home-invasion thriller—an 85-minute ride with surprises both chilling and stirring.  — S. L.

Seeking Mavis Beacon (Neon)

Since 1987, Mavis Beacon, the star of the software program Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, has, well, taught typing. But Mavis Beacon was only ever a character, first played by a woman named Renée L’Espérance, who disappeared from the limelight after her alter ego’s success. In this kinetic documentary, the filmmaker Jazmin Jones teams up with her friend Olivia McKayla Ross to find L’Espérance and uncover how she feels about becoming a Black icon many users believe is an actual person. The pair go down an array of fascinating detours during their search, exploring digital privacy, internet freedom, and, of course, the timelier-than-ever issue of AI-generated art. Seeking Mavis Beacon is a playfully structured documentary, one packed with peculiar characters helping Jones and Ross along the way. Watching it can feel like going down an internet rabbit hole—and emerging much wiser at the end.  — S. L.

Thelma (Magnolia)

Earnest, funny, and sweet without ever becoming cloying, Josh Margolin’s Thelma stars June Squibb as the titular nonagenarian, who becomes a victim of a phone scam and resolves to get her money back. The film has plenty of fun toying with action-movie tropes as it tracks Thelma’s treacherous journey across Los Angeles aboard a motorized scooter with her friend Ben (Richard Roundtree, in one of his final performances). But it also takes care to portray her warm bond with her wayward grandson, Danny (Fred Hechinger); their connection conveys how similar disparate generations can be in their respective struggles for independence and dignity. Thelma is a family crowd-pleaser—and a reminder for those who still can to call their grandmothers more often. — S. L.

Freaky Tales

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s return to Sundance is an homage to 1980s Oakland, but you don’t have to have grown up in the Bay Area to appreciate Freaky Tales. Structured as a series of four interconnected short stories, the film follows different groups of underdogs—a club of punks targeted by Nazi skinheads, a pair of female rappers trying to make ends meet—while a supernatural force descends on the city. Packed with starry cameos, riotous action sequences, and Pedro Pascal’s latest turn as a brooding hero caring for a young charge, Freaky Tales is pure fun. Some of the tales in question are freakier than others, and some characters more archetypal than original, but the flick isn’t trying to reach for profundity or offer answers to its mysteries. Instead, it’s a bloody, cheeky love letter to an erstwhile cultural moment in an ever-changing city. — S. L.

The Outrun

Many addiction dramas veer into clichés: The hero hits rock bottom, goes into rehab, and then relapses at the worst moment. But The Outrun, based on Amy Liptrot’s memoir about her recovery from alcoholism, never succumbs to such impulses. The film, structured in a nonlinear format and directed by Nora Fingscheidt, tells an intimate story using an epic canvas: the remote, windswept Orkney Islands of Scotland. It’s a place that has inspired countless myths, somewhere a person can disappear entirely—or perhaps be transformed anew. For the biology student Rona (a fierce, fantastic Saoirse Ronan), the islands were once her home, but after losing herself to booze in London, they could be a guide to her rebirth. In Fingscheidt’s hands, and with Ronan as a terrific anchor, The Outrun is as clear-eyed as Liptrot’s prose, an exhilarating testament to human resilience as its own transcendent force.  — S. L.

Will & Harper (Netflix)

I wasn’t expecting a documentary involving Will Ferrell and the Strays director Josh Greenbaum to be one of the most touching films I’d watch at Sundance. Will & Harper follows the comedian on a 16-day road trip around the country with his recently transitioned friend Harper Steele. During their drive, Ferrell wants to help reintroduce Steele to the small towns she once felt safe visiting alone, but he wisely lets her take the lead. The result is a film that’s moving but not maudlin: Amid the celebrity cameos and plentiful jokes—the two have a history of ongoing bits, having met on Saturday Night Live when Steele was a writer—is a refreshingly candid look at a friendship’s evolution, and how supporting a loved one takes more than good intentions. True allyship requires generosity, compassion, and effort—as well as, per Ferrell and Steele, plenty of Pringles.  — S. L.

Good One

A camping trip is the perfect locale for a Sundance movie: It doesn’t require a large budget and has immediate plot stakes (will everyone have a good time?), plus it offers  the instant allure of a forest backdrop. India Donaldson’s debut film is a particularly impressive slow-burn drama, leisurely setting up the awkward dynamic between a teenage Sam (the incredible Lily Collias); her divorced dad, Chris (James Le Gros); and his screwup best friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy). Minor tensions eventually bloom into profound conflict. Thanks to Donaldson’s methodical approach and the three leads’ compelling chemistry, the movie keeps evolving, even as it treads carefully through the trees.  — David Sims

I Saw the TV Glow (A24)

I was already eagerly anticipating director Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up to their unique debut narrative feature, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, a micro-budget internet horror that was one of my favorite films of 2022. I Saw the TV Glow still stunned me with its ambition and scale. It follows two teenagers’ obsession with a ’90s-era Buffy the Vampire Slayer–esque cult show, and how the series lingers in their bloodstream as they grow up. Schoenbrun perfectly captures the vibe of yesteryear young-adult TV with the show-within-a-film, exploring just how intimately pop culture can shape a generation. Justice Smith and Brigitte Lundy-Paine are the film’s marvelous stars, but Schoenbrun’s perfect aesthetic sense, shifting from nostalgic to goofy to frightening as needed, is the showstopper.  — D.S.

Sasquatch Sunset (Bleecker Street)

Nathan and David Zellner’s new film, their first since the 2018 comic western Damsel, is as straightforward as they come. It’s about four Sasquatches—played by actors in full monster makeup, some of them rather well known (Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough). What do the Sasquatches do? Well, what you might imagine—they eat; they build simple structures. They also fight, have sex, and pee and poop a lot. Though the movie’s fly-on-the-wall nature is immediately apparent, you’d be forgiven for imagining that it will eventually enter a higher plot gear. But that’s not what the Zellners are going for. Give yourself over to the Sasquatches, and you might just be on their wavelength by the time the credits roll.  — D.S.

A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures)

Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut, When You Finish Saving the World—a somewhat acerbic comedy spearing the try-hard nature of many bleeding-heart liberals—premiered at Sundance in 2022 to mixed reviews. His follow-up, A Real Pain, is a major improvement and one of the best films of the festival, though it asks a similar question—namely, how to reckon with social inequity and suffering without going insane. In A Real Pain, cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin) tour Poland’s Holocaust historical sites as a way of engaging with their recently deceased grandmother. But the film is most interested in the dramatic dynamic between the buttoned-up David and the vibrantly—often unnervingly—emotional Benji. Both Eisenberg and Culkin give fantastic performances in a talky dramedy filled with great character actors.  — D.S.

A Different Man (A24)

Aaron Schimberg’s recursive, clever comedy about representation in art and the ever-shifting standards of beauty is the director’s best work yet, a fascinating follow-up to his 2019 drama, Chained for Life (which also explored the blurry boundary between real life and creativity). A never-better Sebastian Stan plays Edward, an aspiring actor with facial deformities who carries a torch for his playwright neighbor, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve). Edward decides to get experimental surgery, which completely changes his appearance, and after launching a new identity, he finds himself cast in a play inspired by his life. The film offers many Charlie Kaufman–esque twists and turns, piling on layers of metafiction while bringing in the magnetic actor Adam Pearson (and the star of Schimberg’s last movie) as a rival performer who begins to drive Edward mad. It’s hard to lay out the plot of A Different Man without sounding ridiculous, but the film’s self-reflective satire is on point, taking the idea of “representation” on-screen to surreal and brilliant extremes.  — D.S.

Between the Temples

Jason Schwartzman—who is clearly in the middle of a miracle run as an actor—is the perfect leading man for the filmmaker Nathan Silver’s agitated and heavily talky style in Between the Temples. The comedy follows a Jewish cantor suffering from a crisis of faith after losing his wife; he reconnects with his grade-school music teacher (a perfect Carol Kane) and begins to tutor her for an adult bat mitzvah, developing a strange but sweet romantic obsession along the way. Everyone in Between the Temples is always on the verge of a nervous breakdown, accentuated by the jangling style of the cinematographer Sean Price Williams, in the most charming manner possible. Schwartzman and Kane’s simple bond is more than enough to quiet down the film’s quirkiest tendencies. — D.S.

In the Summers

Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize for drama and its directing award went to this debut from Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio, a novelistic tale of parenting and sisterhood that follows a fractured family from childhood to adulthood. The Puerto Rican rapper and singer Residente plays Vicente, a charismatic but unstable patriarch who takes in his daughters, Eva (Sasha Calle) and Violeta (Lío Mehiel), every summer. He lets their childish whims run amok while struggling with his own addiction issues and failed relationships. Every performance in the film is terrific, but Residente is particularly magnetic, never letting the viewer forget what’s charming about his character even as he runs tragically off the rails.  — D.S.