“Haven’t heard of” is an alluring but thorny phrase. It carries a deep subjectivity. Even a movie with the smallest audience possible is “heard of” to many.
Still, it has allure. It’s almost a challenge. “You think I haven’t heard of that movie!?” Continuing that thorniness, those who find it most alluring are likely to seek out off-the-beaten-path movies and are even more likely to have heard of many that could fall under that heading.
So, given the fun and inevitable absurdity of it, we've set a somewhat arbitrary threshold of views on Letterboxd — fewer than 100,000, with most here sitting below 36,000 — as the starting point from which we’re pulling some movies that deserve to be more widely seen.
With all that in mind, here are 10 movies you (probably) haven’t heard of.
Pontypool
This Canadian horror film is something of a novelty: A zombie movie with a unique approach. (Apologies to others that could fit that description: One Cut of the Dead, Maggie, [REC], et al.) Seen through the eyes of radio host Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), a small Ontario town has some kind of virus outbreak taking place. Mazzy attempts to decipher what's happening from his seat at the microphone. While he wants to share accurate information to help people, what starts as hard to believe becomes increasingly, frantically real.
Get your copy of Pontypool on DVD here.
Appropriate Behavior
As Shirin (played by writer and director Desiree Akhavan) spirals in the aftermath of a breakup with her girlfriend, she's trying to rebuild — or maybe just build — her identity. Depressed and occasionally in the mood for risks, her present is interspersed with memories from the relationship and how she hid her bisexuality from her protective Persian parents.
It's a dark, funny, and painfully honest look at how we build, embrace, and even reject identity. Akhavan has a knack for finding truth and humor in intimate and awkward moments.
Get your copy of Appropriate Behavior on DVD here.
Black Girl
Black Girl was the first film from Ousmane Sembene, one of the most revered African filmmakers of the 20th century. While he was a renowned filmmaker, activist, and author, his work remains under-seen in the U.S.
In his 1966 debut, Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) leaves her home in Senegal to work for a well-to-do French family. What is initially seen as an opportunity for a better life becomes a bleak, lonely existence as she loses agency. Black Girl has a straightforward plot, but blossoms, through its nuances and emotional performances, into a powerful story about the persistance of the colonialist mentality.
Get your copy Black Girl on DVD here.
The Book of Clarence
If you enjoy directors taking big swings on out-of-the-box ideas — even if the results aren't perfect — Jeymes Samuel's movie was unjustly slept on when it was released in early 2024.
Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield) is desperate for a better life, constantly willing to do the wrong thing for the right reason. That gets him in over his head with a local organized crime syndicate. While that may sound like a familiar plot, it's set in Jerusalem during the first century A.D. Clarence exists at the same time as Jesus, and likes the prophet's hustle. He dubs himself a messiah as well, reaping the rewards of his newly elevated status. At least, things are looking up until Pontius Pilate (James McAvoy) begins hunting down anyone claiming to be a messiah.
Get your copy of The Book of Clarence on DVD here.
Silent Light
Carlos Reygadas is an incredibly patient filmmaker, willing to let scenarios play out with a lingering, organic honesty that many directors wouldn’t attempt. Silent Light takes place in the quiet confines of a Mennonite village in Mexico. Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr) has had an affair, something expressly forbidden by the religion that is omnipresent in his life. While he thinks he’s found love, his suffering becomes increasingly profound because that love flies in the face of the morality that holds his faith and community together.
Get your copy of Silent Light on DVD here.
F for Fake
After its release in 1973, Orson Welles pushed back on the idea of calling F for Fake a documentary. Instead, he, with characteristic aplomb, said it was “a new kind of film.” While Welles has made more than a few grand statements, he wasn’t wrong in this instance.
Its reputation has grown over the years, but F for Fake remains an underappreciated movie, probing the life of notorious art forger Elmyr de Hory. Rather, it takes that as a jumping-off point to investigate questions of forgery, fakery, authorship, and authenticity. More than a chronicle of de Hory’s exploits, it’s a film essay with the kind of flourishes and theatricality viewers should expect from Welles.
Get your copy of F for Fake on DVD here.
The Saddest Music in the World
All of Guy Maddin’s films might fit this list. Each has a distinctive visual signature, almost as if an experimental-leaning indie film from the '00s was made as a silent film in the 1920s. (Some are, in fact, silent.) Like his other work, The Saddest Music in the World is visually engrossing, seems to take place in a parallel universe, and uses sets, lighting, and camera movement to construct a bold aesthetic.
Set during the Great Depression, Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini), owner of Winnipeg's Port-Huntley Beer, stages a contest to see which nation has the saddest music. Many of the contestants are linked through family, and their music unfurls the great tragedies of their lives.
Get your copy of The Saddest Music in the World on DVD here.
Divinity
This Steven Soderbergh-produced movie is decidedly not for everyone. But its black-and-white, acid-trip imagery will delight anyone open to a more "out there" experience. Viewers are cued into its visual language from its opening shots of pulsating lights in indecipherable shapes — a visual Rorschach test: is that a heart? A rib cage? a face? — mutating until the camera tracks straight into the lens of a camera. It’s surreal and often feels ripped from a nightmare.
Sterling Pierce (Scott Bakula) dreamed of creating a drug that could induce immortality. However, the seeming altruism of his quest fell by the wayside when, following his death, his son (Stephen Dorff) took control of the company. Under Jaxxon's leadership, the drug, Divinity, has perverted society on a seemingly barren planet. All that becomes backdrop when Jaxxon is abducted by mysterious, violent brothers interested in what Divinity could yet become.
Click here to stream Divinity on Prime Video with AMC +.
The Living Wake
An indie comedy that flew under the radar when it was released in 2007, The Living Wake is a charming, goofy, somewhat twee comedy. The low-budget movie has almost a vaudevillian feel, opening with a montage about the childhood of K. Roth Binew (Mike O’Connell) in the style of an old-timey newsreel.
Binew is an idiosyncratic protagonist who has mythologized his humdrum life. He is dying of a “yet to be named, grave, vague disease" that is "almost as grave in its vagueness as it is vague in graveness.” On the day he's told he will die, he plans to host a living wake for himself. His biographer, Mills (Jesse Eisenberg), drives him around town in a bicycle rickshaw to deliver invitations to friends, antagonists, and past lovers. It’s light, thoughtful, and fun, with appearances from Jim Gaffigan, Ann Dowd, and Eddie Pepitone.
Get your copy of The Living Wake on DVD here.
Henry Fool
Like The Living Wake, Henry Fool is a dark comedy filled with style and insightful characters, cloaked in the absurdity of unlikely events. Simon (James Urbaniak) is a discontented garbage man who moves into the basement of Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), a failed novelist and ex-convict.
Henry gives Simon a notebook to record his thoughts and poems. The small gesture becomes life-changing as Simon becomes a Nobel-winning poet. That success pushes Henry deeper into his vices and worst instincts. An unlikely candidate for a sequel, Hartley made made two: Fay Grim, nine years later, and, tight years after that, Ned Rifle.
Get your copy of Henry Fool on DVD here.
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