10 Great Indie Films From The Past 5 Years You May Have Missed

When Napolean Dynamite hit the screens in 2004 it was a runaway success, both critically and financially. Filmed on a budget of just $400,000, it had grossed $44 million within a year and quickly became one of the most quoted and merchandised comedies of the millenium. So when Jared and Jerusha Hess’s follow up movie was announced audiences waited eagerly for another hysterically quirky indie comedy masterpiece. And they got…..Nacho Libre.

It’s no surprise then that their subsequent 2 films stayed fairly below the radar. Gentleman Broncos was an offbeat tale of a budding sci-fi writer whose story is stolen by a famous fantasy novelist. It was widely panned by critics. Its follow-up, Don Verdean, received equally unenthusiastic reviews.

A story of an archaeologist who specialises in locating long lost biblical relics finds himself faking his findings in order to please his financier. When his Israeli helper, Boaz, finds out, he blackmails him and, in return for taking him to America, he keeps his silence. However, Boaz, can’t help but bend the truth even further and eventually ends up promising a Chinese billionaire that they will find “the holy grail of biblical artefacts”……….”the holy grail”.

Although Don Verdean is no Napolean Dynamite, there is still a lot to enjoy in this and their other films. It has the same sweet, unassuming gentleness of their characters that marks all of their work. Although you might expect a satire about religious zealotry to be teeming with pointedly barbed jokes and with characters that harshly mock their real world equivalents, this film doesn’t do that. Rather than launch an all-out assault on their beliefs and actions, it just affectionately giggles at them behind their backs. The result, however, is not a shortage of laughs, but an abundance of subtle ones. An acquired taste, but one with that familiar Dynamite texture. One of the highlights of the film is Jermain Clement as Boaz. He just seems effortlessly funny in every comedic role he plays, and it’s worth seeing the film for him alone.