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The Top 10 Indie Films Of 2013

It's more than a bit difficult to complain about how much of a struggle picking out my top ten indie films of 2013 turned out to be. Digitization and the internet are the modern filmmaker's best friend - who needs a major studio backer any more? Cinema has always been for the people, but in a joyous quirk of the Internet Age, it's now finally by the people as well.

[h2]10. Upstream Color[/h2]

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Many months on, I still have little-to-no idea as to what I was actually watching. Shane Carruth pretty much epitomizes the independent filmmaker. In the long awaited follow-up to the mind-bending Primer, the writer/director/actor/composer created a Lynchian feverdream of the bizarre and the beautiful. It’s the kind of film that demands multiple viewings -a cinematic acid trip packed with jumps in time and space. Despite its deliberately impenetrable plot, it’s a visually dazzling and suprisingly visceral experience featuring one of the year’s most underrated performances from the brilliant Amy Seimetz. As fascinating as it is confusing, Upstream Color is – if nothing else – thoroughly unique.

[h2]9. Europa Report[/h2]

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Just when you thought the found footage genre was dead in the water, its final death rattle went and produced something actually worth watching. An off-beatly intelligent, occasionally very creepy little sci-fi movie, Europa Report follows a group of astronauts searching for intelligent life on Jupiter’s fourth largest moon – at which point everything inevitably goes completely wrong.

Though measured in build-up, it grows into an all out bat-shit insane crescendo that you’d begrudge in a lesser film, but here feels warranted. With some brilliant visual touches belying its minimal funding, Europa Report is an encouraging reflection of just how far low-budget cinema has come.