With cinema more accessible and available than ever, the films that best encapsulate our fractured present and allow us to imagine a future are ones largely made outside the studio system. The language of 2020s independent cinema is polyphonic, constructed with modest means, and although it understands the uncertainties of our present, it asks that we leave our cynicism at the door.
We can only begin to notice a paradigm shift within the current cinematic landscape if we attune to the frequencies slowly bubbling below the oversaturated noise that has turned our attention into a scarce currency. In these independently made gems, many of which premiered at the BFI London Film Festival – and are now streaming on BFI Player – our attention is recalibrated, genre frameworks are bent out of shape and local details resonate globally. With a heightened emphasis on precarious political climates, tactile domestic spaces and fragile ecosystems, these films come together both as a reflection of our digitally mediated present, and as a testament to the malleable power of the moving image as it continues to reform and reconstruct itself against cinema as “content”.
Urchin (2025, Harris Dickinson)
It might seem surprising to suggest that one of the strongest debuts to emerge from the UK in the past year came from one of the decade’s most exciting young actors, yet it’s undeniable that Harris Dickinson’s Urchin shows a film-maker of exceptional promise. Set in the streets of east London, his directorial debut balances gritty social realism with surreal flourishes, exploring homelessness, the struggles of addiction and the neglect inflicted on the most vulnerable by a system that should be protecting them. Frank Dillane’s unwavering, mercurial central performance earned him the Un Certain Regard best actor award at Cannes to boot.
Red Rooms (2023, Pascal Plante)
When does obsession warp into complicity? Casting a critical eye on our insatiable appetite for true crime media, Canadian film-maker Pascal Plante gives us one of the decade’s most relevant films through the figure of a “web sleuth” – Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), a model who becomes engrossed in the case of a serial killer on trial for murdering three young girls, allegedly filming the murders to be watched by people online. With Red Rooms, Plante plunges us into the darkest corners of the dark web without ever showing any of the grotesque violence committed, constructing a stunning, deeply disturbing film about parasocial fanaticism and all-consuming horror of choosing not to look away.
All We Imagine As Light (2024, Payal Kapadia)
With the first Indian film to play in Competition at the Cannes film festival in 30 years, Payal Kapadia emerged as one of our time’s most exceptional humanist film-makers. The bustling, chaotic streets of Mumbai have never been committed to celluloid as serene as in All We Imagine as Light, where the rich interior worlds of three women working at a hospital come together in a reflection about yearning, desire, the profound potential of the chance encounter and the importance of living in community. A film where the empathy machine of cinema creates a palpable space to suggest that it is through the light of our imagination and capacity for human connection that we can transcend the rigid societal structures that keep us in the darkness.
EO (2022, Jerzy Skolimowski)
Swapping the 1960s with the 2020s and the French countryside with modern-day Poland, veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski reanimates the spirit of a 20th-century cinematic cornerstone, Robert Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar. EO, which received an Oscar nomination for best international feature film, is a daring reflection on environmental destruction, the human cruelty that breeds nonhuman suffering, and the small moments of kindness that manage to shine through. The film immerses us in the titular donkey’s experience of the world but does not pretend to replicate its point of view, adopting an observational gaze that taps into the elusive depths of an inner life that remains inaccessible to us, gently bridging the gap between our disparate emotional worlds.
The Eternal Daughter (2022, Joanna Hogg)
Joanna Hogg’s spiritual follow-up to her Souvenir diptych finds new means with which to confront the complicated relationship between a mother and daughter. The double casting of Tilda Swinton, one of the most chameleonic performers of our time, collapses past into present and lends this ghost story an embodied out-of-timeness. It is notable too, that being shot at the height of a pandemic-induced lockdown, The Eternal Daughter ends up subliminally mirroring the stillness and isolation of that strange period of time that marked the beginning of the decade. Through the subtle constraints of safety protocols, Hogg crafts a uniquely haunting aesthetic with the utmost economy.
Tótem (2023, Lila Avilés)
Recently praised by Diego Luna, Lila Avilés’ second feature unfolds with a tender, magical innocence, transposing the minutiae of the everyday into an intuitive, sensory journey, experienced through the eyes of a seven-year-old girl. The world is too vast and complex for the young Sol (Naíma Sentíes) to grasp as she is swept up in her extended family’s preparations for her terminally ill father’s birthday, yet the quiet awareness of mortality subtly burrows itself into her subconscious. Tótem is a film of thoughtful, organic observation and delicate closeups, but there is also a palpable understanding of the larger contemporary anxieties lurking in the off-screen margins.
Hundreds of Beavers (2022, Mike Cheslik)
The cult status of Mike Cheslik’s maximalist directorial debut stands as the ultimate rebuttal to the claim that it has become impossible to imagine mass-appeal comedy operating outside modern Hollywood conventions. With a shoestring budget of $150,000 and a dream, this film about an applejack salesman whose orchard is destroyed by beavers (actors in large animal mascot costumes) filters early slapstick cinema and Looney Tunes-style chaos through video game logic. Unafraid to revel in its silliness, Hundreds of Beavers is independent film-making at its most resourceful, expressive, insane form, and is sure to be remembered as one of the funniest films of the 2020s.
April (2024, Dea Kulumbegashvili)
We are living in thoroughly regressive times when it comes to the issue of reproductive healthcare, and in recent years, there have been several films foregrounding the nuanced complexities surrounding the topic. One of the boldest, most deft explorations comes from Georgian writer/director Dea Kulumbegashvili, who tackles the violation of feminine bodily autonomy through a harrowing portrait of Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), an obstetrician-gynaecologist who secretly performs abortions in rural Georgia. Shifting and slipping through the cracks of genre conventions, April comes together as something radical and singular, not demanding our attention as much as insisting that we feel our way through its meditative imagery.
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