The Best Independent Films of 2023

2023 will be remembered as the year of “Barbenheimer.” The cultural phenomenon that united Barbie and Oppenheimer reignited the debate on the vitality of theaters and demonstrated the power of auteur spectacle. These blockbusters deservedly dominated the global conversation, marking a turning point for the industry.

But beyond this, 2023 was also a year of profound introspection. We witnessed a quieter movement, a turning inward for cinema to urgently explore the inner landscape of the individual. Works like Anatomy of a Fall or May December questioned the very act of storytelling, using the structure of the courtroom drama and meta-cinema to interrogate the possibility of objective truth in a world saturated with performance.

This trend toward intimacy did not mean an escape from the world, but a different way of interpreting it. Social critique became more subtle, nestled in the folds of personal stories, like the precarity of work in Fallen Leaves. This guide is a journey across the entire spectrum of the year. It is a path that unites the great masterpieces that defined 2023 with the most courageous independent works, betting everything on the power of original screenplays to affirm that the vastest universe to explore, at times, is the one contained within a single human life.

Past Lives

Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are separated when Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Twenty years later, they reunite in New York for a fateful week, confronting notions of destiny, love, and the choices that define a life. Their unresolved bond tests Nora’s present reality, married to an American writer, in an emotional triangle of rare maturity and delicacy.

Celine Song’s debut feature is a miracle of grace and restraint, a first film that possesses the wisdom and composure of a mature author. Past Lives established itself from its Sundance premiere as one of the most significant new voices of the year, thanks to a semi-autobiographical screenplay that transforms a personal experience into a universal story about the nature of time and connection. The film masterfully explores the duality of the immigrant experience: Nora is not just divided between two continents, but between two versions of herself—the one she is and the one she might have been. This split is symbolized by the two men in her life: Hae Sung, the embodiment of her Korean past, and Arthur, her American present. Language itself becomes a border, a territory of the soul, as crystallized in Arthur’s poignant admission: “You dream in a language I don’t understand.

The Korean concept of “In-Yun”—the providence or fate that connects people across their past lives—serves as the film’s philosophical engine. However, Song uses it not to build an easy romantic tale, but to deconstruct it. Past Lives rejects the conventional love triangle structure to investigate something deeper: the acceptance of life’s crossroads and the painful beauty of closure. The film’s emotional impact lies precisely in this renunciation of melodrama, relying instead on a direction that is bold in its quietness, made of long silences, shots that emphasize distance and proximity, and the choice to shoot on 35mm film, which gives every image a tactile, nostalgic quality.

All of Us Strangers

Adam, a lonely screenwriter living in a nearly deserted London high-rise, has a chance encounter with his mysterious neighbor, Harry, an event that shatters the monotony of his life. As a relationship blossoms between them, Adam is haunted by memories of the past and finds himself drawn to his childhood town, where his parents, who died thirty years earlier, appear to be living, unchanged by time.

Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers is a ghost story where the ghosts are not menacing entities, but embodiments of unprocessed grief. The film immerses itself in a dreamlike and melancholic atmosphere, masterfully blurring the lines between external reality and its protagonist’s inner landscape. Haigh’s direction transforms pain into a spatial experience: Adam is trapped in his grief as he is in his nearly empty apartment, an island of solitude suspended over the London metropolis. The supernatural visits to his parents are not a narrative gimmick, but a powerful metaphor for the need to reconcile with the past in order to live in the present.

The film is also a profound exploration of a specific queer generational trauma. Growing up gay in the 1980s and ’90s, under the shadow of the AIDS crisis and the silence surrounding it, meant an experience of isolation and fear for many. The conversations Adam has with his parents, frozen in time, become a form of impossible reconciliation, a dialogue that heals old wounds across time. The cinematic language of loneliness is rendered with piercing precision: the shots of Adam isolated against the skyline, his reflection superimposed on the city lights, create a tangible sense of alienation, in stark contrast to the nostalgic and almost painful warmth of his childhood home.

A Thousand and One

Fresh out of prison, the indomitable Inez kidnaps her six-year-old son, Terry, from the foster care system. Clinging to their secret and to each other, mother and son try to reclaim a sense of home, identity, and stability in a rapidly and brutally changing New York City. Through the years, their struggle for survival collides with the forces of gentrification and systemic violence.

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, A.V. Rockwell’s debut feature is a stunning “intimate epic” that confidently weaves a deep character study with a radical social critique. New York is not merely a backdrop but an antagonistic force that shapes and threatens the protagonists’ lives. Rockwell brilliantly uses archival materials, such as speeches by mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg, to mark the passage of time and the implementation of policies that progressively eroded the social fabric of neighborhoods like Harlem. Gentrification and the “Stop and Frisk” policy are not abstract concepts, but concrete obstacles that Inez and Terry must overcome daily.

At the center of it all is the monumental performance by Teyana Taylor, who embodies Inez with unforgettable strength, vulnerability, and tenacity. Her character is an ode to Black motherhood, a figure who defies every stereotype to protect her son. The film deconstructs the conventional idea of family, arguing that bonds are not defined by blood but by love, sacrifice, and a fierce will to protect. A Thousand and One is a powerful film that, through the story of one family, tells the story of a city and a nation, and does so with devastating emotional impact.

Anatomy of a Fall

Sandra, a German writer, lives in an isolated chalet in the French Alps with her husband, Samuel, and their visually impaired son, Daniel. When Samuel is found dead at the foot of their house, the police begin to suspect Sandra. What follows is a trial that not only investigates the circumstances of the death but becomes a ruthless psychological dissection of the couple’s tumultuous relationship.

Palme d’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall masterfully subverts the courtroom drama genre. The courtroom is not a place where truth is ascertained, but an arena where the most convincing narrative is constructed. The film is not interested in solving the mystery of Samuel’s death, but in exploring the impossibility of truly knowing another person and the subjective nature of any “truth.” The trial becomes a performance, where personal history, betrayals, frustrations, and even Sandra’s literary output are used as weapons to build an image of guilt or innocence.

Sandra Hüller’s performance is a masterpiece of ambiguity. Her character remains an enigma, forcing the viewer to take on the role of the jury, to constantly judge and reconsider their impressions based on fragmented evidence and biased testimonies. The film keenly explores how identity, in this case Sandra’s bisexuality, can be distorted and weaponized as a narrative tool. The truth always remains off-screen, elusive, suggesting that in every relationship there is a core of opacity that no autopsy, legal or emotional, can ever fully illuminate.

May December

Twenty years after their scandalous tabloid romance shocked the nation, Gracie and her husband Joe, twenty-three years her junior, lead a seemingly perfect life. Their stability is threatened by the arrival of Elizabeth, a famous actress set to play Gracie in a film, who insinuates herself into their lives to study the character, reopening wounds that never fully healed.

Todd Haynes, a master of contemporary melodrama, returns to his favorite themes with May December, a layered, ironic, and profoundly unsettling work. The film is both a continuation and an evolution of his exploration of Douglas Sirk’s aesthetics. Haynes uses Michel Legrand’s score for The Go-Between to create an atmosphere of camp and disturbing artifice, underscoring the performative nature of his characters’ lives. The polished surface conceals an abyss of unresolved trauma and denied truths.

Beyond the psychological drama, May December is a powerful meta-cinematic reflection on the ethics of storytelling and the predatory nature of the entertainment industry. Elizabeth’s “research” is an invasion that demolishes the fragile reality Gracie and Joe have built to survive. The true emotional heart of the film, however, lies in Charles Melton’s extraordinary performance. His Joe is a man-child, an adult whose emotional development was arrested at the age of his trauma. His slow, painful awakening to the realization that he was a victim, not a consenting lover, is what elevates the film from a sharp satire to a devastating tragedy.

The Zone of Interest

Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his wife Hedwig strive to build a dream life for their family in an idyllic house and garden, situated right next to the wall of the concentration camp. Their bourgeois routine of pool parties, gardening, and minor domestic dramas continues undisturbed, separated from the unspeakable horror by only a thin layer of concrete and indifference.

With The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer performs a radical and necessary act of direction, challenging the conventions of cinema about the Shoah. The horror is never shown, but it is constantly present, an inescapable background noise. Johnnie Burn’s sound design is the film’s true protagonist: the screams, the gunshots, the incessant hum of the crematoria seep into the apparent tranquility of family life, creating an unbearable cognitive dissonance for the viewer. It is a formalist work that uses the off-screen space to force us to confront not the violence itself, but the psychological mechanisms of complicity and denial.

Glazer’s direction adopts a surveillance aesthetic, using fixed and hidden cameras that observe the characters with a clinical, almost scientific coldness. This style, which the director himself called “Big Brother in the Nazi house,” prevents any form of identification and reinforces the forensic analysis of evil. The Zone of Interest does not seek to explain the unexplainable, but to show the terrifying normality with which human beings can become accustomed to atrocity, building a flowering garden on the edge of hell. It is a cinematic experience that leaves a profound mark, a warning about the banality of evil and our capacity to compartmentalize and ignore.

The Holdovers

A grumpy and universally disliked ancient history professor, a brilliant but troubled student, and an African American cook grieving her son who died in Vietnam. They are “the holdovers,” forced to spend the 1970 Christmas holidays together on the deserted campus of a prestigious New England boarding school. The unlikely trio must overcome their mutual distrust to find unexpected comfort.

With The Holdovers, Alexander Payne delivers a heartfelt and philologically perfect homage to 1970s American cinema, particularly that of Hal Ashby. This is not a mere aesthetic reconstruction; the film breathes the air of that era, adopting its grainy photography, measured rhythms, and, above all, its profound humanity in telling the stories of flawed and marginal characters. Payne’s direction, supported by an impeccable screenplay, creates a nostalgic and bittersweet atmosphere, a microcosm where three lonely souls find an unexpected “chosen family.”

The film is a triumph of writing and performance. Paul Giamatti gives one of his best performances, lending Professor Hunham a complexity that goes beyond the caricature of a misanthrope. Newcomer Dominic Sessa is a revelation, while Da’Vine Joy Randolph, an Oscar winner for her role, offers a portrayal of grief with heartbreaking dignity and power. Beneath the surface of melancholic comedy, The Holdovers explores themes of class resentment, the weight of past failures, and the difficulty of finding one’s place in the world, confirming itself as an instant classic, a film capable of warming the heart without ever falling into sentimentality.

Fallen Leaves

Ansa works in a supermarket; Holappa is a metalworker. Both are lonely in Helsinki, and their lives are marked by precarity and a quiet melancholy. A chance meeting at a karaoke bar seems to offer a possibility of connection, but their timid attempt at romance is thwarted by his alcoholism, a lost phone number, and a series of unfortunate events.

Aki Kaurismäki returns with a work that is the quintessence of his cinema: a minimalist tale, pervaded by laconic humor and a deep, disarming tenderness. Fallen Leaves is a romantic comedy for the age of precarity, where the protagonists fight not against grand destinies, but against the small and large miseries of daily life: zero-hour contracts, unjust bosses, and a seemingly endemic loneliness. The Finnish director’s style is unmistakable: dialogues reduced to the bare minimum, a retro mise-en-scène that seems suspended in time, and a soundtrack that ranges from old Finnish songs to rock’n’roll.

Beneath its deadpan surface, the film hides a subtle but tenacious critique of contemporary capitalism. Ansa and Holappa’s struggle for a dignified job and a stable life reflects an increasingly fragmented working condition. Furthermore, the constant radio news about the war in Ukraine anchors this small personal story in a context of global instability. And yet, Fallen Leaves is an intrinsically optimistic film. It is a hymn to the courage required to fall in love in adulthood, an affirmation of the possibility of finding warmth and connection even in the coldest and most indifferent of worlds.

Showing Up

Lizzy is a sculptor who works as an administrator at an art school in Portland. A few days before the opening of her solo exhibition, her concentration is constantly threatened by the small frustrations of daily life: a broken water heater, her landlord and more successful artist colleague, a dysfunctional family, and an injured pigeon she finds herself having to care for.

With Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt continues her minimalist exploration of ordinary lives, offering an incredibly realistic and delicately humorous portrait of the creative process. The film represents a subtle evolution in her style, introducing a warmer comedic vein than her previous works, while maintaining her formal rigor and attention to detail. Artistic creation is not depicted as a moment of inspiration, but as a daily labor, a constant struggle to carve out mental and physical space amidst the chaos of life.

The film demystifies the art world, showing it not as a glamorous environment, but as a community of working people, with their rivalries, insecurities, and small gestures of solidarity. The passive-aggressive relationship between Lizzy (an extraordinary Michelle Williams) and her friend-rival Jo (Hong Chau) is the beating heart of the story. The injured pigeon, passed from hand to hand, becomes a powerful metaphor for care and responsibility in a world of self-absorbed individuals. Showing Up is a patient and profound work, an ode to perseverance and to the simple but fundamental act of “showing up” for one’s art and for others.

Poor Things

Bella Baxter is a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter. Under his protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she lacks, she runs off with Duncan Wedderburn, a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across continents. Free from the prejudices of her time, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

Yorgos Lanthimos unleashes his wildest imagination in Poor Things, a baroque, hilarious, and visually stunning work that stands in stark contrast to the minimalism of many of the year’s independent films. Drawing heavily from surrealism, German Expressionism, and steampunk aesthetics, the Greek director creates a unique visual universe, a fantastical and grotesque Victorian Europe that serves as the stage for a radical feminist fable. The film is a kind of Frankenstein in reverse, where the “creature” is not a monster to be feared but a heroine to be celebrated.

Bella’s journey is a picaresque tour de force of self-discovery and sexual liberation. Without social or moral filters, she experiences the world with a ravenous curiosity, laying bare the absurdity of patriarchal conventions. Emma Stone’s performance is simply monumental: physical, courageous, and comically brilliant, she perfectly embodies Bella’s evolution from a naive creature to a woman in charge of her own destiny. Poor Things is an overwhelming cinematic experience, a hymn to freedom and the joy of discovery, as intelligent as it is visually sumptuous.

Fremont

Donya, a young Afghan refugee who worked as a translator for the U.S. army, now lives a lonely life in Fremont, California. She works at a fortune cookie factory and suffers from insomnia, tormented by survivor’s guilt. In a moment of impulse, she decides to insert a personal, cryptic message into one of the cookies, a gesture that sets in motion a series of unexpected encounters.

With a sensibility reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s cinema, director Babak Jalali creates a small, precious gem of independent film with Fremont. Shot in elegant and melancholic black and white, the film is a laconic and tender comedy that finds humor and poetry in the monotony of the everyday. Jalali’s direction is measured, his gaze on the characters full of empathy and devoid of any sentimentality.

The film addresses the refugee experience from an unusual perspective, focusing not so much on explicit trauma, but on the loneliness and the difficult search for a new sense of belonging. The performance of the protagonist, non-professional actress Anaita Wali Zada (herself an Afghan refugee), is extraordinarily powerful. Her stoic presence and subtle humor communicate an entire world of repressed emotions. Winner of the John Cassavetes Award at the Spirit Awards, Fremont is a celebration of quiet resilience and the hope that can arise from the smallest of gestures.

Rotting in the Sun

Filmmaker Sebastián Silva, in the throes of a deep creative and existential crisis, retreats to a gay nudist beach in Mexico City. There, after a near-fatal encounter with the waves, he meets social media influencer Jordan Firstman. Despite initial dislike, Silva agrees to collaborate on a project with him. But when Jordan arrives at Sebastián’s apartment to start work, he discovers the director has vanished without a trace.

Rotting in the Sun is a bold, provocative, and wildly entertaining work. Sebastián Silva directs and stars as a self-parodying version of himself in this film that begins as a caustic satire on influencer culture, narcissism, and the pretensions of the art world, only to unexpectedly transform into a dark and twisted thriller. The film’s structure is its stroke of genius: the first part, with its cringe humor and explicit depiction of sexuality, tests the viewer, only to completely subvert expectations in the second.

The film is a meta-cinematic reflection on the act of creating and the thin line separating authenticity from performance. By using himself and Jordan Firstman as characters, Silva plays with the audience’s perception and fiercely criticizes the dynamics of class and power. It is an uncomfortable, at times off-putting, work, but one endowed with a unique vision and a courage that represent the purest and most uncompromising essence of independent cinema. A hidden masterpiece destined to become a cult classic.