The last 12 months have been tough for many reasons – but the world of independent cinema saw some signs of recovery. With blockbusters once again raking in colossal amounts of money at the box office, indy films have also found a growing, dedicated audience, willing to return to theatres.
Indy Film Library itself returned to cinemas in 2022, with our annual showcase in April proving our best attended event to date – and it is hoping to build on that momentum in our coming 2023 festival.
IFL will remain a hybrid organisation as it moves ahead, though – and that means more of the tremendous online showcases we curated for audiences in the last year. 2022’s Student, Experimental and Horror Shorts events each proved to be among the best viewed content on the IFL website, bringing sharp spikes in our traffic during the weeks we hosted them – as viewers looked to get a glimpse of the industry’s future, from some extremely talented up-and-coming filmmakers.
We also completed a second year of our podcast, Tube Rats, finding free-to-view short films for our audiences via YouTube and Vimeo. Our final picks for the best films watched by our panel of comedians will be released in the following weeks.
Meanwhile, readership of IFL’s written content has also continued to climb steadily, with the site garnering 17% more views than it received in 2021. As we celebrate the start of 2023, it is only right that we look back on the most popular films of the last 12 months, without whom we could never have enjoyed such an excellent fourth year.
The top 10 films reviewed on Indy Film Library in terms of readership were:
10. Eat the Rich
9. Haru
8. Almas Rotas
7. The Load
4. Text Me When You Get Home xx
3. For Unto Us
2. Choir Girl
Once again, all of us at Indy Film Library would like to sincerely thank all the artists, academics and film-lovers who have helped make 2022 an incredible year for us. Hopefully the months ahead of us will be filled with even more exceptional cinema, and opportunities to reach viewers with brave, insightful and entertaining new films – by whatever means are available to us. Hopefully we’ll see even more of you in 2023 – digitally, and in the real world!
And of course, we wish you all a Happy and Healthy New Year!