Directed by Michael Roemer • 1980 • United States
Starring Elizabeth Huddle, Christopher Lloyd, Elizabeth Franz

Having chronicled the last days of terminally ill people for his documentary DYING, director Michael Roemer channeled his experiences making that film into this emotionally raw and wre...

Directed by Michael Imperioli • 2009 • United States
Starring Steve Schirripa, Sharon Angela, Emory Cohen

The directorial debut from “Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli is an intense, emotionally raw portrait of lost souls attempting to fill the spiritual voids at the center of their lives. Over t...

Directed by Todd Haynes • 1991 • United States
Starring Edith Meeks, Larry Maxwell, Susan Norman

Inspired by the writings of Jean Genet, Todd Haynes’s debut feature deftly interweaves a trio of transgressive tales—“Hero,” “Horror,” and “Homo”—that build towards a devastating climax. “Hero,” shot...

Directed by Tim Blake Nelson • 1997 • United States
Starring Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson, Nick Stahl

One of the great but long-unheralded debut films, Tim Blake Nelson’s first feature is an emotionally shattering tale of existential desolation in a small Oklahoma town. Unfolding in a fractur...

Directed by Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen • 2000 • United States

Far from a standard music documentary, Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen’s loving portrait of underground musician Benjamin Smoke—speed freak, drag queen, and a true outsider artist in every sense of the word—captures his singular personalit...

Directed by Bridgett M. Davis • 1996 • United States
Starring Jake-Ann Jones, Ron Cephas Jones, Patricia DeArcy

A long-unseen jewel of 1990s Black independent filmmaking, Bridgett M. Davis’s fearless exploration of Black female agency centers on Cicely (Jake-Ann Jones), the daughter of a former ...

Directed by Harmony Korine • 1999 • United States
Starring Ewen Bremner, Chloë Sevigny, Werner Herzog

The first Dogme 95 film made outside of Europe, Harmony Korine’s follow-up to his divisive GUMMO finds him and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (who shot the original Dogme film, Thomas Vinter...

Directed by Cauleen Smith • 1998 • United States
Starring Toby Smith, April Barnett, Will Power

A rediscovered treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s DRYLONGSO embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. Alarmed by the rat...

Directed by Dennis Hopper • 1980 • United States
Starring Linda Manz, Dennis Hopper, Sharon Farrell

Dennis Hopper’s hurricane-force domestic tragedy is the ’80s answer to EASY RIDER, following troubled youth subculture to its frightening, screaming, self-annihilating extreme. Just out of prison ...

Directed by Gregg Araki • 1997 • United States
Starring James Duval, Rachel True, Nathan Bexton

You can practically smell the pheromones wafting off this kaleidoscopic odyssey, which finds director Gregg Araki crossing soap-operatic elements with blasts of science fiction, indie-kid cool, and sh...

Directed by Karyn Kusama • 2000 • United States
Starring Michelle Rodriguez, Jaime Tirelli, Paul Calderon

Bullied by her father at home and feeling adrift at school, Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) finds refuge in an unexpected pocket of her native Brooklyn—a timeworn boxing gym, where she lea...

Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1976 • United States
Starring Kathryn Bigelow, Ariel Bock, Marion Cajori

While Lizzie Borden’s features BORN IN FLAMES and WORKING GIRLS have taken their place as landmarks of feminist cinema, her debut—the fascinating experimental documentary REGROUPING—has gone larg...

Directed by Noah Baumbach • 2013 • United States
Starring Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner

Greta Gerwig is radiant as Frances, a woman in her late twenties in contemporary New York trying to sort out her ambitions, her finances, and, above all, her intimate but shifting bond with her best friend, Sop...

Directed by Jem Cohen • 1999 • United States
Starring Fugazi

Filmed over the course of more than ten years, from 1987 to 1998, INSTRUMENT is director Jem Cohen’s visceral, fittingly unconventional portrait of legendary DC punk band Fugazi from their origins through their electrifying prime. Capt...

Directed by Ekwa Msangi • 2020 • United States
Starring Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Zainab Jah, Jayme Lawson

In her luminous feature debut, filmmaker Ekwa Msangi chronicles a broken family’s journey to wholeness with empathy and insight. Seventeen years after his family was separated by the civil wa...

Directed by Jonathan Wacks • 1989 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring A Martinez, Gary Farmer, Joanelle Romero

The road-movie genre gets a lyrical twist shot through with Native American spirituality in this bittersweet portrait of two Cheyenne men on a journey through the American West and...

Directed by Diana Peralta • 2019 • United States
Starring Sasha Merci, Darlene Demorizi, Héctor Aníbal

Sibling bonds are both rekindled and tested in the achingly alive feature debut from Diana Peralta. Rita (Sasha Merci) and Carolina (Darlene Demorizi), two high-spirited sisters raised in New Y...

Directed by Abel Ferrara • 1998 • United States
Starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento

Abel Ferrara’s slick, sexy adaptation of a story by cyberpunk godfather William Gibson journeys deep into the world of corporate espionage, as shady businessmen Fox (Christopher Walken) and X ...

Directed by Cheryl Dunye • 1996 • United States
Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, Valarie Walker

The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye s...

Directed by Gregg Araki • 1995 • United States, France
Starring James Duval, Rose McGowan, Johnathon Schaech

Gregg Araki takes a road trip to hell in this wild, meth- and fast-food-fueled joyride through the margins of a menacing American wasteland. When they inadvertently link up with a dangero...

Directed by Paul Schrader • 1990 • United States
Starring Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett, Natasha Richardson

Two couples are drawn into a dark psychosexual vortex in Paul Schrader’s stylish take on the erotic thriller. Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson are a British couple hoping to repa...

Directed by Jake Meginsky with Neil Young • 2018 • United States
Starring Milford Graves

This portrait of renowned percussionist and founding pioneer of avant-garde jazz Milford Graves finds him exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity. The film draws the viewer through th...