The 7 Best Undistributed Films of 2022:

It’s not too late to pick up a thoughtful gift for the people in your life, and that includes film distributors. While much of Hollywood is shutting down in advance of the holidays, plenty of cinema-loving elves are still toiling away in hopes of seeing their (very deserving) films land underneath the metaphorical tree.

And there are plenty of gifts to share, because even as the distribution landscape continues to shift and shape with startling regularity, some of the year’s best cinematic efforts are still looking for a home. These titles include awards contenders, festival standouts, and proven winners, readymade for an ambitious streamer or an up-and-coming boutique label. The question of theatrical viability is hardly the same one it was even three years ago, and opportunities for smart distributors to seek out unique material is bigger than ever.

This holiday season, won’t you consider giving a home to these wonderful films? This list includes Sundance winners, Cannes winners, Toronto rabble-rousers, and a bonafide superhero of very different provenance than we’re used to. There is something for everyone, and all of it is very good indeed.

Jude Dry and David Ehrlich also contributed to this article.

“The Dam”
The directorial debut of Paris-based Lebanese artist Ali Cherri is a virtually wordless and entrancing look at the experiences of bricklayer Maher (Maher el Khair, a professional bricklayer and nonprofessional actor) who works at a remote Sundanese river surrounded by the desert. As news reports about civilian protests from the city pipe in through the airwaves, Cheri develops a mesmerizing audiovisual tapestry of mud and water, with the land coming to life around his character as if he’s crafting a benevolent Frankenstein’s monster.

With its silent-cinema approach and a complex look at the way revolutionary spirit can creep into rural life, “The Dam” is a both ambitious and accessible as a parable for individualism on the margins of society. It’s a terrific first feature from a new filmmaking talent that could enjoy a long theatrical life as arthouse audiences clamor for ambitious cinematic experiences they can’t replicate at home. —EK

Sales Contact: Indie Sales

“A House Made of Splinters”
Set at Lysychansk Center in Eastern Ukraine, a shelter for children from parents deemed unfit to raise them, Simon Lereng Wilmont’s revealing documentary would be heartbreaking even without the most recent international headlines about the circumstances of its country.

The Danish filmmaker’s probing study centers on three residents of the orphanage as they recall the troubled circumstances that led them there and ruminate on the gathering storm of the war around them.

At the same time, the movie doesn’t linger in the total bleak prospects of this emerging generation. Instead, with its delicate fly-on-the-wall approach, the movie lingers in the nuances of daily life at the center and explores how even the most dire circumstances can be faced through the power of companionship (and some measure of institutional support). As Ukraine’s current circumstances against Russia struggle to retain the level of media attention they deserve, “A House Made of Splinters” is exactly the sort of intimate portrait that could help rectify that problem. —EK

Sales Contact: Cinephil

“Joyland”
Banned (and then unbanned) in Pakistan, even after it was chosen as the country’s official Oscar submission, “Joyland” is more than just a landmark work of queer storytelling from a society that still treats it as taboo. Saim Sadiq’s first feature is a sensitive and thoughtful look at the capacity for desire to transcend even the most restrictive circumstances.

In this case, that means Haider (Ali Junejo) finding work as a backup dancer at an erotic theater where he falls in love with the trans woman at its center (Alina Khan). Haider’s conflict between his family obligations and the newfound pleasure of a world more aligned with his true self is an age-old conflict, but given renewed immediacy with Sadiq’s sturdy ability to navigate two opposing worlds with ease.

Blending kitchen-sink realism with a melodramatic plot right out of the Douglas Sirk playbook, “Joyland” is a striking illustration of how filmmakers from less appreciated film cultures can bring a necessary spotlight to the conundrums of their marginalized worlds to prove that every specific challenge has universal resonance. Here’s hoping that Sadiq keeps doing just that.

The winner of the Queer Palme at this year’s Cannes (where it was also the first-ever Pakistani film to play in the festival’s official selection), “Joyland” is the sort of obvious international crowdpleaser poised to go far. Yet risk-averse U.S. distributors (and others with crowded slates) keep passing on it, despite the formidable crossover potential for the story, and a promising young director who deserves to get into business with companies that need good talent behind the camera. It’s not too late for that to happen. —EK

Sales Contact: Film Constellation

“Love Life”
An enormously poignant melodrama told at the volume of a broken whisper, Kōji Fukada’s “Love Life” represents a major breakthrough for a filmmaker who’s found the perfect story for his probing but distant style. In that light, it doesn’t seem incidental that “Love Life” is a story about distance — specifically the distance between people who reach for each other in the wake of a tragedy that strands them far away from themselves.

“Love Life” introduces us to a domestic idyll that it disrupts with a deceptive casualness typical of Fukada’s work. The bloom comes off the rose slowly at first, and then all at once in a single moment of everyday awfulness, when the newly remarried Taeko’s (Fumino Kimura) six-year-old son dies in a freak accident. This being a Fukada film, the reaction to the kid’s death is muted to the point of implosion. It’s only when Park, the boy’s deaf and homeless estranged father, storms into the funeral and smacks Taeko across the face as she stands beside the open casket that any trace of feeling breaks through.

On paper, this scenario might seem to have the makings of an overblown soap opera, but Fukada’s film is much less concerned with any sexual entanglements between its characters than with the closeness they feel towards one another (or don’t). Will Taeko try to escape her grief by moving forward into the future, or by searching for solace in the recesses of her past? That question is posed in more emotionally pliant and accessible fashion than those at the center of Fukada’s previous work; like “A Girl Missing” and “The Real Thing,” “Love Life” is likely destined for an arthouse streamer, but anyone who risks a limited theatrical run might enjoy a response that rewards their effort. —DE

Sales Contact: MAM Film

“The People’s Joker”
Though it was pulled from subsequent screenings, the buzzy Midnight Madness premiere of “The People’s Joker” at the Toronto International Film Festival will not be its last. Coming out as a bold filmmaker with a fearless voice, prolific alt comedy editor Vera Drew’s mixed media dystopia is an experimental trans coming-of-age story wrapped in a scathing critique and confident rebuke of mainstream comedy.

Fiercely original and deeply personal, it’s too damn good not to be seen. Plus, the film’s scathing critique of mainstream comedy as a propaganda machine for the billionaire class has plenty of bite, and any attempt by a corporate entity to silence that message only proves the point.

“The People’s Joker” is a loosely autobiographical experimental comedy about the filmmaker discovering she’s trans. Like most comic book movies, it starts with an origin story. Blending live-action and simple cartoonish animation, Drew plays both protagonist and narrator as she charts her journey from sad little boy to aspiring alt-comedian to anarchist t-girl after a confession of dysmorphia sees her carted off to a quack doctor who prescribes her Smylex, a laughing gas that will make her “Mama’s happy little boy.” Her pain masked with drug dependency, she moves to Gotham City to pursue a career as a clown.

Hopefully, legal woes will plague “The People’s Joker” just enough to drum up interest in Drew’s wild invention, but not enough to scare away the right distributor. Unlike many comedies — alternative and mainstream — “The People’s Joker” is not so in love with its own satire to rob it of any emotional truth. Underneath the satirical madness lies a genuinely moving story of self-acceptance, self-love, and the inspiring act of an artist stepping into her power. All jokes aside, the people deserve to see it. —JD

Sales Contact: Vera Drew

“Rule 34”
The winner of the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival, Brazilian director Júlia Murat’s third feature follows a young Black woman (Sol Miranda) in Rio de Janeiro who works her way through college by living a double life as an online sex worker.

At once feminist and constrained by the patriarchal forces of the society around her (not to mention the racist ones), she’s a defiant modern figure who serves as searing embodiment of her country’s troubled times.

The movie’s approach to its character’s sexual and intellectual curiosity is a daring gamble that deserves broader recognition. In the hands of an innovative distributor willing to get it in front of Brazilian audiences eager to see the evolving nature of their home represented onscreen, “Rule 34” could continue to stir up conversations about what Brazil’s future really looks like. —EK

Sales Contact: Esquina Films

“War Pony”
The winner of the Camera d’Or for best first feature at Cannes this year, “War Pony” may have scared off squeamish distributors because even though it centers on the experiences of two Lakota boys on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, it’s the directorial debut of two white women, Gina Gammell and actress-turned-filmmaker Riley Keough. It’s hard to imagine any other reason why this absorbing look at small-town malaise in an indigenous community would remain unsold.

There is an obvious valid argument to be made in the abstract about why certain movies should only be told by certain people, but every movie makes its own case for itself. Nobody leveled this complaint against Chloé Zhao for her own two films made against the same backdrop, and “War Pony” was similarly made in collaboration with its subjects on Pine Ridge.

You can feel that in the way this touching and tender story creates genuine pathos out of two very different stories, one involving pre-teen Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder) and the other centered on 23-year-old Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) as he undergoes a series of ill-fated job prospects in an attempt to make ends meet.

These dueling experiences (co-written by the directors with Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy) don’t converge until the end, but “War Pony” does a fine job of shifting between them as it maps out a serio-comic world of insular frustrations and curiosity for possibilities lurking just over the horizon.

It has a certain kinship with FX’s stunning “Reservation Dogs” for the way it attempts to make up for missed time with the representation of indigenous youth in American cinema (and that itself should prove there’s a market for more stories like this), but more than that, it features two star-is-born performances from its two young leads, if only someone was willing to take the chance on getting the movie out there. —EK

Sales Contact: CAA

View this article at IndieWire.