All articles tagged with #indie film
Zack Snyder’s first independent feature, The Last Photograph, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) as a Special Event. The 135-minute action thriller stars Stuart Martin as a former DEA agent and Fra Fee as a heroin-addicted war photographer. The film, which Snyder also shot, received sharply divided critical reception, with some praising its visuals and others criticizing its dialogue and pacing.
Zack Snyder has shifted from blockbuster spectacle to intimate indie filmmaking with 'The Last Photograph,' a project he shot in the Colombian Amazon without a studio backing. The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, marks a stark departure from his DC Universe work, featuring a smaller budget, a handheld camera style, and a narrative focused on redemption rather than commercial product.
Deadline reports that the Toronto International Film Festival’s accompanying market is becoming a key sales and financing hub for indie features, with 150+ exhibitors and a slate of high‑profile titles like Being Heumann and I Play Rocky. The TIFF market, running Sept. 10–16 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, aims to pre-sell and finance projects to start production early next year, as buyers and streamers navigate shorter theatrical windows and evolving distribution. Some festival screenings are reduced to accommodate sales activity, and there’s talk that AFM could anchor deals that began at TIFF—all underscoring a shift toward market-driven indie acquisitions in a evolving landscape.
Alison Willmore’s Chronovisor crafts a small, hypnotic dark‑academia mystery: a Columbia memory‑studies professor becomes obsessed with a legendary time‑viewer, with warm, 16‑mm photography and a nocturnal Manhattan mood elevating a meditation on memory, certainty, and intellect over a traditional plot.
Telluride's 53rd lineup prioritizes indie titles over big-studio releases, featuring world premieres such as Focus Features' Elsinore and A24's The Debut, plus Tender Loving Care, Wild Horse Nine, Ink, and Bucking Fastard among a robust slate that also includes Cannes/Sundance debuts and a strong documentary program, signaling an awards-season kickoff rooted in prestige rather than blockbusters.
Vikram Murthi argues that Alexander Ullom’s debut It Ends stands out in Gen Z horror by turning existential dread into a hangout road movie. Three late‑twenty‑somethings are trapped on an endless forest road, using 90‑second breaks to explore life, friendship, and meaning while a zombie-like mob looms, shifting the film from traditional scares to a meditation on post‑grad malaise. With sharp writing, a relatable ensemble, and a pandemic‑era production ethos (LED volume, grassroots funding), It Ends arrives amid Neon’s push to ride the zoomer horror wave, offering emotional clarity and an allegory that speaks to both universal fears and generational anxieties. It sits alongside Obsession and Backrooms in the broader conversation but aims for a more mature, existential payoff.
AMC Theatres is launching Leawood Films, a low‑risk distribution label to bring fully financed small‑ and mid‑budget features to theatres. Variance will handle domestic distribution while AMC oversees marketing; overseas rights will be managed by Piece of Magic Entertainment. The slate aims to book titles widely with first releases expected in 2027–2028, and will maintain about a 45‑day exclusive theatrical window (or longer) with a 90‑day path to streaming. Advisors include Toby Emmerich, Ricky Strauss, Kyle Davies and Craig Jacobson, reporting to AMC’s Adam Aron, in a move designed to complement, not compete with, major studios.
A24’s Tony, a biopic of Anthony Bourdain, expanded to 1,652 theaters and grossed $5 million this weekend, landing seventh at the box office; the film has grossed about $6.6 million since its debut, with a budget pegged under $15 million. Dominic Sessa stars as Bourdain, with Emilia Jones, Dagmara Domińczyk, Leo Woodall and Antonio Banderas, in a release that opened in six theaters on Aug. 7 before expanding to 37 venues, aided by strong reviews and fan affection for the chef.
Felicia Day launches The Guild: Ren Faire’d on Kickstarter to fund a Ren Faire–set feature reuniting The Guild cast; the project is pursuing a sub-$10 million budget and sits among Kickstarter’s top-funded narrative films with roughly $5.2 million raised, aiming to top Veronica Mars' $5.7 million mark. The campaign includes merch, an RPG and a dating-sim to boost pledges, and faces typical film-production hurdles like insurance, union contracts and tax credits, underscoring Day’s belief in IP ownership and the potential of web-native storytelling.
The Hollywood Reporter profiles The Rivals of Amziah King, an ambitious 2023-shot indie from Andrew Patterson that marks Matthew McConaughey's return to acting after a five-year pause. After premiering at SXSW 2025 and facing a slow, indie-friendly release via Black Bear, the film unfolds a honey-business saga set in rural Oklahoma, starring McConaughey as Amziah King opposite Angelina LookingGlass's Kateri. Patterson describes a project born from limited resources that grew into a big, multi-character effort with a bold narrative pivot and a post-production path marked by creative differences. McConaughey explains his attraction to the story and his desire to support underdogs, while the cast and crew discuss the film's independent DNA, the effort to find authentic Native American casting, and the sense that this film embodies a renaissance of small, risky cinema.
Ellar Coltrane, the child star from Boyhood, now lives in rural Texas, far from Hollywood. He works manual labor and volunteers as a firefighter while pursuing an EMT license, and has appeared in a few independent projects. He says he has moved on from a big screen career, misses collaborating on sets, and prefers passion projects; he attended a Boyhood 12-year reunion in Austin and has integrated with the Texas indie film scene in Austin and El Paso.
Eli Roth explains that Ice Cream Man was designed as the “Saving Private Ryan” of splatter, building the brutal mass-kill sequence one gag at a time and planning it with on-site, location-specific thinking. The centerpiece school massacre was choreographed across a single, memorable take and shot in a tight window within 19 days in an elementary school, using FrameForge storyboards to map camera positions. He involved parents beforehand, kept the child cast engaged with horror-fan sensibilities, and pursued an independent, unrated release under its own distribution label, emphasizing an ultra-indie, director-driven approach rather than studio control.
Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex uses a bold male-sub, female-dom dynamic and a starry indie cast to probe desire, power, and art-world satire while commenting on queer resistance; retooled after #MeToo, it aims to spark dialogue about sexuality in cinema amid rising puritanism, with a broad US rollout and international dates on the way.
Gregg Araki talks indie-film grit—from a confrontational USC moment that fueled his drive to a new 4K restoration of Mysterious Skin and the long-awaited I Want Your Sex with Olivia Wilde. He explains how Now Apocalypse sharpened his TV directing, why he flipped the gender dynamics post-#MeToo, and how Almodóvar and Wong Kar-wai shaped his vision, while also sharing personal notes on family, dogs, and the ongoing push to bend cinematic boundaries.
Pamela Anderson discusses her career reinvention from Baywatch-era stardom to indie work, praising the satirical drama Rosebush Pruning, detailing how recent projects like The Last Showgirl and Netflix’s Pamela, a Love Story have reintroduced her to audiences, and saying she’s pursuing bold, varied roles with a second chance mindset, while noting she has no plans for a Baywatch return but is open to theater and other surprises as she lines up new projects including Place to Be and Alma.