So I saw this voting thread and it caused me some trouble. One,because sometimes people differentiate between independently produced/distributed films and the quirky genre that came to define that scene. I also didn't want to pick any indie movies that were produced or distributed by companies like Fox Searchlight since that felt like cheating haha. And I didn't want to pick a movie people have seen before cause where's the fun in that. Even more troublesome, it was hard for me to narrow down my selection. So I'm gonna divide this into well known Indies and lesser known and maybe you all should reply which one you'd like. Well known: 1. Donnie Darko 2. Requiem for a Dream 3. Trainspotting 4. Being John Malkovich 5. Little Miss Sunshine (yeah, this one is Fox but oh well haha) 6. Primer 7. Boyhood 8. Dazed and Confused 9. Run Lola Run Lesser known: 1. Pi 2. Hunger 3. Funny Games (1997) 4. La Haine 5. Chungking Express 6. Beau Travail 7. Frances Ha 8. Me and You and Everyone We Know 9. Submarine It's hard for me to pick a favorite there. Really, really hard. Three I haven't seen myself, but I do love Hunger, La Haine, Chungking Express, Primer, Donnie Darko, and Being John Malkovich.
I've seen almost every film on this list. Not a big fan of the first two, but I recently saw La Haine for the first time and that is an intense film in every sense of the word intense. I would love to see what kind of discussion would result from us watching that film.
I adore La Haine. It's a great film and would be a very timely watch with recent events
Word on the street is that Mathieu Kassovits (le Director) wants to remake La Haine in modern times. I think it would be really interesting given the recent CHarlie Hebdo incident in Paris and could even find success in the US with our own racial tensions exploding the past year or so. Although, I don't know if La Haine qualifies as indie, per se. It was distributed by Canal+, the biggest film distributor in France, and had a budget of 2.5 million Euro, although it does look low-budget so props to the cinematographer there. Then again I might just be a little pedantic with what qualifies as indie as well :/
"Distributed" is pretty meaningless as to whether a movie was made independently. The distributor buys an equity stake after the fact for the right to disseminate the movie. Any movie that's going to get seen has to have someone with some deep pockets distributing it. Don't let that bother you.