5 Indie Movies This Week: Time and Water, The Last Viking, Barton Fink, & More

This week on Indie Film Weekly, Glen Reynolds highlights five indie films worth knowing about: three in theaters, one on demand, and one classic.

🎥 Indie Film Reviews:
Time and Water (2026)
The Last Viking (2026)
The Currents (2026)
The Beast (2024)
Barton Fink (1991)

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Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly for the week of May 29th, 2026. I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds. This week in theaters, we've got a documentary that turns melting glaciers into a family story with real emotional weight. We've got a Danish black comedy about two brothers and a buried bag of stolen money with chaos riding shotgun. And we've got an Argentine psychodrama where one impulsive act on a work trip cracks open an entire life. If you can see one of these in a theater this weekend, please do. Indie films don't get a long runway, and a strong opening weekend is what keeps them in your town. On demand, I've got a big swing sci-fi romance about trying to erase your feelings and realizing they might erase you. And for our classic, we're celebrating a 35th anniversary Hollywood nightmare about writers, ego, and a hotel that feels like it's sweating secrets. Want the written version of these pics each week? I also publish the Indie Film Weekly Newsletter. It's the same five films in a quick read. Sign up at newsletter.circusroadfilms.com. Let's dive in. Our first film in theaters this week is Time and Water, directed by Sarah Dosa. This documentary follows Icelandic writer Andre Snare Magnuson as he tries to preserve what is vanishing in front of him. Iceland's glaciers are melting. And the film treats that loss as personal, not theoretical. Andre reaches for family archives, photographs, home movies, and stories passed down through generations, and uses them as a bridge between a changing landscape and a changing family. The emotional spine is his grandparents. Their love story and their relationship to the land becomes a kind of measuring stick for what used to feel permanent. Dosa keeps the structure flexible. It's part essay, part memory book, part warning, but it never plays like a scolding. Andre is a great guide because he's curious and clear and sometimes funny, even when he's talking about fear. The film also knows when to stop talking. It lets the wind and ice and quiet do the work. There's a moment-to-moment honesty here that makes the big topic easier to hold. You're not being asked to absorb a pile of facts. You're being asked to feel what it's like to lose something you thought would always be there. If climate anxiety has ever made you feel numb, this is a film that gives that feeling a place to go. Our second film in theaters this week is The Last Viking, written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen. This Danish black comedy starts with a straightforward mission and immediately turns it into a mess of family history. Anker has just gotten out after a 15-year prison sentence for bank robbery. Before he went in, he made his brother Manfred bury the stolen money in the forest near their mother's house. Now Anker wants the cash and a restart, but Manfred can't remember where it is. Over the years, Manfred has developed disassociative identity disorder, and his shifting personalities make every attempt at help unpredictable and sometimes dangerous. Anker's frustration becomes the fuel because he's a guy who thinks force and logic can solve anything, including a mind that won't cooperate. Nikolai Lee Kos plays Anker as a man trying to bully reality into behaving. Mads Mickelson plays Manfred with a performance that's funny, unnerving, and oddly tender, often in the same scene. Jensen keeps the film moving with escalating plans and worse consequences, but the heart of it is the bond between brothers who can't escape each other. It premiered in Venice and it has that Jensen signature, deadpan humor, sudden volatility, and real emotion hiding under the chaos. Our last indie film in theaters this week is The Currents. Written and directed by Mili Gross Mumenthaler, it follows Lena, a successful Argentine fashion designer whose world shifts during a work trip to Switzerland. After a public moment that should feel like a triumph, she does something shocking. She walks to an icy lake and plunges in. She survives, returns to Buenos Aires, and refuses to explain it to anyone. That choice, the silence, becomes the tension. Lena goes back to meanings, routines, and family life, but something in her no longer fits the story she's been living. The film isn't chasing a tidy psychological answer. It tracks what happens when a single act breaks your relationship to yourself. You can feel Lena watching her own life from a half step away. Isabel Amy Gonzalez Sola plays her with a composed surface and a restless interior, like she's trying to behave correctly while her instincts are changing. Mumenthaler builds pressure through small disruptions, a pause that goes too long, a decision that doesn't match the old pattern, a private memory that keeps resurfacing. It's elegant and unsettling without being showy. The city feels polished, then suddenly claustrophobic. The lake becomes a symbol Lena can't outrun. If you like character-driven films where the drama is internal, but the stakes feel real, this one sticks. So in theaters this week, that's Time and Water, The Last Viking, and The Currents. Our spotlight indie film on demand this week is The Beast. Directed by Bertrand Bonello, it's a sci-fi romance built around a cold idea. What if society treated strong emotion as a problem to eliminate? In a near future Paris, Gabrielle signs up for a process that sends her through past lives to purify her and reduce emotional intensity. The film moves across distinct time periods, and in each one, Gabrielle keeps colliding with Louis, a man who feels familiar in ways she can't fully explain. Leia Sedoux plays Gabrielle with a controlled surface and a growing sense of dread, like she can feel something important being filed away. George McKay plays Louis as a shifting presence, sometimes tender, sometimes threatening, and never entirely safe. What makes the movie work is that the concept isn't background. It shapes every choice. Love becomes a liability. Fear becomes currency. The film keeps asking whether removing pain is just another way of removing the self. It's ambitious, strange, and surprisingly direct about what it's afraid of. If you like films that keep evolving while staying locked on emotion, this is a great on-demand pick. You can rent it on Apple TV or Prime Video. Our indie film classic this week is Barton Fink, celebrating its 35th anniversary. Directed by Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen, it follows Barton, a New York playwright who gets lured to Hollywood in 1941 after a Broadway hit. He arrives convinced he's going to write something meaningful about the common man. Instead, he is assigned a wrestling picture and immediately hits a wall. Barton moves into the Hotel Earl, a sweltering, decaying place that feels like it's sweating secrets, and he sits at his typewriter producing nothing. The studio system keeps offering polite pressure and empty encouragement, which somehow makes it worse. John Tatura plays Barton as a man who wants to be pure and also wants to be admired, which is a dangerous combo when you're blocked. John Goodman plays Charlie, the friendly neighbor, who talks too much and feels harmless until the film starts tightening around him. Judy Davis shows up as Audrey, the sharp assistant who becomes Barton's lifeline, then his complication. The movie turns creative paralysis into a full-body horror story, but it's also very funny about ego and self-mythology. If you've ever stared at a blank page and decided the world was conspiring against you, this is your nightmare comfort food. You can rent it on Apple TV, Prime Video, or Fendango at home. And that wraps it for the May 29th, 2026 edition of Indie Film Weekly. If you want to support the show, do the simple stuff. Subscribe so you don't miss next week. Share it with one friend who likes being early. Rate it because it helps the apps take the show seriously. Then leave a quick review, even one sentence helps. Until next week, keep it curious, keep it brave, and keep it indie.