Against all odds, pandemics, and crises, independent cinema is still alive and kicking, and the decade we just left behind us has been an endless source of wonders for arthouse and indie films aficionados around the world.

New actors, directors, and stars have rose to prominence, and the films we’ve fallen in love with over the past ten years have shepherded the seventh art toward exciting and uncharted paths.

To celebrate cinema’s most exciting new voices of the 2010s, here are a few, memorable films in which their stars have shun bright, selected for you from the world’s best festivals.

These titles are brought to you in partnership with eyelet (read the news), a streaming platform designed to give cinephiles around the world access to the very best in independent cinema. In conjunction with eyelet, we are now able to showcase films we’ve been reviewing over the years - titles you can stream and read about on Cineuropa. Stay tuned for the new movies coming your way soon!

April’s Daughter

A Best script award in Cannes (for Chronic, 2015) and the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival just two months ago (for his latest dystopia, New Order). It’s been a decade of successes for Michel Franco, with several bows on the Croisette, including April’s Daughter, his 2017 Jury Prize winner in the Un Certain Regard section.

Black Coal, Thin Ice

What a decade Yi’nan Diao has enjoyed! A few years before his 2019 Cannes hit (The Wild Goose Lake), the Chinese director won a Golden Bear for this exquisite noir starring a dissolute ex detective, a trail of human remains, and a widow with a dark secret.

Birds of Passage [+leggi anche:
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From the international success - and Oscar nomination - for his Embrace of the Serpent (2015) all the way the big-budgeted, star-studded Waiting for the Barbarians (2019), the 2010s have been quite a ride for Ciro Guerra. In 2018, the Colombian teamed up with Cristina Gallego for Birds of Passage, a haunting look at the genesis of the country’s drug trade as experienced by an indigenous family in the country’s northeast.

Diamantino [+leggi anche:
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A fallen soccer superstar vows to adopt a refugee child, while becoming the naive unwitting centrepiece in in a bizarre plot to Make Portugal Great Again. The freshest blast of comedic lunacy to come out of Cannes in recent years, courtesy of the twisted minds of writers-directors Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt.

Eden [+leggi anche:
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Mia Hansen-Løve’s stupefying Eden is a lot more than a portrait of an aspiring Parisian DJ in the early 1990s - it’s a dazzling, intoxicating canvas of a whole era, city, and music, graced with the timeless hits by Daft Punk and other icons.

Wandering Girl [+leggi anche:
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Colombian director Ruben Mendoza is fairly known in his native turf, but his 2018 Wandering Girl, a prize-winner and festival hit abroad, cemented his reputation as a talent to reckon with. Look out for his future projects, and keep an eye on the exciting new voices coming out of Colombia each year.

Gook

Having spent the first half of the decade starring in comedies and blockbusters (among them, the Twilight saga), Justin Chon switched to directing halfway through the 2010s, first with Man Up and then with Gook, a parable of racial tensions that tips its hat to Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. It’s riveting, electric, and painfully timely stuff to reckon with.

The Past [+leggi anche:
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Two Oscars for Best International Film, a Golden Globe, multiple bows - and awards - in Cannes and elsewhere - and all of that in the space of 10 years. Asghar Farhadi has turned into one of Iran’s most revered auteurs, and his 2013 The Past - winner of Cannes’s Ecumenical Jury Prize - is another stupefying drama about fractured families, and people struggling to keep them together against all odds.

In the Name of [+leggi anche:
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Running toward God but away from his sexuality, Adam becomes a priest at age 21 - only to struggle with long-suppressed desires later in his life. One of six features the prolific Malgorzata Szumowska directed in the past 10 years, In the Name of earned her a Teddy Award at the Berlinale in 2013.

Jessica Forever [+leggi anche:
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After a few shorts together, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel joined forces for Jessica Forever, a Berlinale entry that unfolds in a dystopian future where violent misfits reign supreme, and one woman - and her makeshift family - fight for peace.