Best Of
The Best Independent Films of 2025
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 5 min read
Checked September 9, 2026, which means the 2025 independent film year is fully settled. Sundance ran in January 2025, Cannes in May, the Spirit Awards handed out their prizes on February 15, 2026, and the Academy Awards followed on March 15. So this is not a guess about what will hold up. It's the list after the arguments finished.
The word independent is doing real work here. Everything below came out of a festival rather than a studio release calendar, and most of them cost less than the marketing budget of one superhero film. They are sorted by what kind of evening you want, because "best" is useless if the film you pick makes you miserable at the wrong moment.
The ones that swept
Train Dreams (Clint Bentley, Netflix) won Best Feature and Best Director at the Spirit Awards and was nominated for Best Picture. It adapts Denis Johnson's novella about Robert Grainier, a railroad and logging labourer in Idaho, across eighty years of a life that history did not record. Joel Edgerton plays him, with Felicity Jones and William H. Macy, and Will Patton narrates. It premiered at Sundance in January 2025 and reached Netflix that November. It is slow, elegiac and almost plotless. If that sounds like a criticism, pick something else on this page.
Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor, A24) won the Spirit Award for Best Screenplay and it's Victor's first film, which they wrote, directed and star in. A literature professor in New England moves through the years after a sexual assault, and the film is structured out of order so you meet the aftermath before the event. Naomi Ackie plays the friend who holds it together. It is genuinely funny, which is the hardest thing it does. One hundred and three minutes.
Lurker (Alex Russell, Mubi) took Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay at the Spirits. Theodore Pellerin plays a retail worker who attaches himself to a rising musician, played by Archie Madekwe, becomes his documentarian, and turns vicious when someone else moves closer. It is a horribly precise film about proximity to fame and it tightens like a screw. The most uncomfortable ninety minutes on this list.
The international ones
It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi) won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in May 2025 and was nominated for Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay. Former Iranian political prisoners think they recognize the man who tortured them, and then have to decide what they actually want. Panahi made it under conditions that would have stopped most directors. It's the film on this page most likely to start an argument in the room afterward.
Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, Neon in North America) won the Grand Prix at Cannes and went on to become the first Norwegian film to win Best International Feature. Two sisters, played by Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, are approached by their estranged film director father, played by Stellan Skarsgard, who wants to make a film about their family and has cast an American actress, played by Elle Fanning, as their mother. It is enormously moving without ever raising its voice.
The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonca Filho, Neon) won Best Director and Best Actor at Cannes, took the Spirit Award for Best International Film, and was nominated for Best Picture, the second year running that a Brazilian film made that category. Wagner Moura plays a researcher hiding in Recife in 1977 under the military dictatorship, and the film braids political thriller, family story and a genuinely strange urban legend about a severed leg. It's the most purely entertaining of the international picks.
Sirat (Oliver Laxe) won the Jury Prize at Cannes and was nominated for the international Oscar and the Spirit international award. A father looks for his missing daughter among sound systems in the Moroccan desert, and then the film does something roughly halfway through that nobody warns you about. Neon picked it up out of Cannes. Go in knowing nothing.
The small, strange American ones
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (Mary Bronstein, A24) won Rose Byrne the Spirit Award for Best Lead Performance, plus a Silver Bear at Berlin and a Golden Globe, and an Oscar nomination followed. She plays a therapist whose daughter has a feeding disorder, whose ceiling has a hole in it, and whose grip is going. Conan O'Brien and A$AP Rocky are both in it and both are good. People compare it to Uncut Gems for the anxiety, which is fair. Do not watch it tired.
Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs, Janus Films) led the Spirit nominations and runs seventy six minutes. It is two people in a room in December 1974: Ben Whishaw as the photographer Peter Hujar, describing everything he did yesterday, and Rebecca Hall as Linda Rosenkrantz, recording him. That is the entire film. It should not work and it is transfixing, and it's the best argument on this list that a small idea executed exactly is worth more than a big one.
Twinless (James Sweeney, Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions) won the Sundance audience award in the US dramatic competition and got Dylan O'Brien a special jury acting prize. O'Brien plays a man grieving his identical twin who meets someone at a support group, played by writer-director Sweeney, whose story is not what he says it is. It's a comedy for about half its length and then it is not. Reveals matter here, so avoid trailers.
How to choose tonight
If you want the one that will stay with you longest, Sentimental Value. If you have seventy six minutes and want to be surprised, Peter Hujar's Day. If you want to be gripped, Lurker or The Secret Agent. If you want to laugh and then be caught off guard, Twinless or Sorry, Baby. Save If I Had Legs I'd Kick You and Sirat for a night when you have the reserves. Where each of these streams changes; the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
If you'd rather have the shortlist assembled from films you already rate, our movie recommendation tool returns picks with a reason for each and where they stream.
Topics covered: best-of, 2025, indie, movies, independent, cinema
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.