It’s 2025 – congratulations on making it this far! The first half of the decade has been tough for filmmakers around the world. Amid the echoes of the Covid-19 pandemic, rampant inflation, the alleged rise of artificial intelligence, and government austerity stripping back support for the arts, independent filmmakers have been pushed to their limits. And yet, they have still managed to produce a wealth of innovative and engaging movies, which Indy Film Library could not survive without – which we should look back on as 2024 fades into memory.
Thanks to a glut of remarkable films being submitted via FilmFreeway, 2024 saw Indy Film Library expand its cinematic programme. IFL hosted its first UK screening in February, with a showcase of UK-based films at London’s Garden Cinema to mark our fifth anniversary. At the same time, our annual showcase in April proved our best attended event to date – and we hope to build on that momentum for the coming 2025 festival.
Even with this increased focus on physical screenings, IFL remains a hybrid organisation – and that saw more of the tremendous online showcases that we have curated for audiences over the years. 2024’s Student, Experimental and Horror Shorts events each proved to be among the best viewed content on the IFL website, bringing sharp spikes in traffic during the weeks they were hosted – as viewers looked to get a glimpse of the industry’s future, from some extremely talented, up-and-coming filmmakers.
At the same time, our two Saturday Matinees seasons brought in a great deal of excitement, while we showcased films by artists facing censorship and economic sanctions from around the world. With our latest season due to kick off later in January, we are thrilled with the opportunity the Saturday Matinees have presented us, to introduce viewers to radical and thought-provoking content from some of the overlooked corners of the cinematic community.
Meanwhile, readership of IFL’s written content has also continued to climb steadily, with the site garnering 7% more views than it received in 2023. To celebrate the start of 2025, it is only right to look back on the most popular films of the last 12 months, without whom IFL would not have enjoyed such an excellent sixth year.
Not all of them will have received the write-ups they were hoping for, but each one of them deserves commendation for the courage to be critiqued publicly, helping future filmmakers to learn from their efforts. With that being said, it is very gratifying to see that the most-read review of 2024 was a positive 4-star review for The Metamorphosis, which was read more than 1,000 times in the lead up to our April festival – where it won the award for Best Cinematography.
The top 10 films reviewed on Indy Film Library in terms of readership were: