Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly for the week of August 21, 2026. I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds. This week in theaters, we've got a near-future sci-fi thriller with a murder case inside an AI-controlled world. We've got a horror drama about captivity, faith, art, and one extremely troubling path to self-improvement. And we've got a French drama about a famous conductor, the brother he never knew, and a local marching band. Quick ask before we move on if you can see one of these films in the theater this weekend. Indie films need people in seats early while the seats are still being offered. On demand, I've got a pop star comeback story where music, fashion, old wounds, and unfinished business all collide. And for our classic, we're celebrating a 30th anniversary family drama built around secrets that refuse to stay buried. You want the written version of these pics each week? I also publish the Indie Film Weekly Newsletter. It's the same five films and a quick read. Sign up at newsletter.com. Let's dive in. Our first indie film in theaters this week is Hotspot. Directed by Agnieszka Smka. This is a sci-fi thriller set in a near future society ruled by sentient artificial intelligence. Numi Rapast stars, and the story follows a private investigator pulled into a murder case that starts to reveal a rebel group capable of undermining the digital system controlling everyone else. So basically, a relaxing little reminder that the future may involve murder, surveillance, rebellion, and a computer with management authority. Smotchinska previously directed the Lure and the Silent Twins, and she is not exactly known for making tidy, anonymous movies. That makes this one interesting. The premise has cyberpunk ingredients, but appeals not just neon and paranoia. This idea of a human detective trying to solve a human crime inside a world that may no longer be built for humans. The title itself suggests a pressure point, a place where the system gets hot enough to break. Rapace is always good in stories where survival requires stubbornness, suspicion, and a high tolerance for physical and emotional damage. If you like your sci-fi with Noir Shadows, Political Unease, and the sense that the machines have read the employee handbook too closely, this is the lead pick of the week. Our second indie film in theaters this week is Bloodshine, directed by Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks. This horror drama follows a young filmmaker who is held captive by a religious zealot convinced that his rituals will transform him into a god. That is a sentence with very few good exits. Bennett also stars as Clara, and the setup puts art, belief, power, and bodily terror into a confined space where nobody seems especially interested in healthy boundaries. The movie uses that continued setup to dig into faith, control, art, and delusion, which gives the horror movie more to do than simply wait for the next terrible thing to happen. You do not need a giant mythology if the room itself feels dangerous enough. Larry Festin appears in the cast, which is almost a small independent horror seal of approval at this point. What interests me here is the collision between filmmaking and fanaticism. Clara is a filmmaker, someone used to shaping images and meaning. Her captor has his own vision, but his version of creation is violent, delusional, and possibly sacred only to him. The scary part is not only the captivity, it is the certainty behind it, the idea that Clara's captor believes every terrible thing he does has a higher purpose. It may not be a comfortable watch, but comfort is not always the assignment. Sometimes the assignment is surviving 92 minutes with your shoulders near your ears. Our last indie film in theaters this week is The Marching Band, directed by Emmanuel Courcoll. This French comedy drama follows Thabau, a world famous orchestra conductor who discovers he has leukemia, then learns during the search for a donor that he was adopted and has a brother he never knew. That brother, Jimmy, is a cafeteria worker in a northern French town and plays trombone in a local marching band. It's a big emotional setup, but the film seems to know that music stories work best when they are not only about music, they're about class, family, pride, regret, and the strange vulnerability of trying to play in tune with other people. The Beau comes from the concert hall. Jimmy comes from a working community with its own rhythms, frustrations, and loyalties. The brass band becomes the bridge between them, which sounds corny until you remember that corininess done honestly can be very effective. There is something inherently cinematic about people making music together badly, then better, then with feeling. The film also gives the week a welcome tonal shift. After AI noir and cult captivity, a French brass band starts to sound like medical treatment. If you like human-scale dramas with music, messy brotherhood, and a little emotional crescendo, this is a good bet. So in theaters this week, that's Hotspot, Bloodshine, and The Marching Band. Our spotlight indie film on demand this week is Mother Mary, directed by David Lowry. This stars Anne Hathaway as a world-famous pop star preparing for a major comeback. She turns to Sam, played by Michaela Cole, a former friend, a former designer, and maybe something more complicated than either of those labels can hold. The setup has glamour, performance, ego, art, and old emotional business, which is a very dangerous cocktail if the dress has to be ready by showtime. Lowry is an interesting filmmaker for this because he is drawn to myth, memory, grief, and longing, even when the surface looks like genre or spectacle. Here the surface is pop music and fashion, but the real story is about the people behind the image and the cost of becoming an icon. Hathaway gives the movie the star power it needs, but Cole is the emotional anchor, the person who remembers who Mother Mary was before the world turned her into something else. This is not just pop star has feelings. It is about authorship, reinvention, intimacy, and the strange labor of helping someone else look transcendent while your own heart is still on the floor. You can stream it on HBO Max. Our indie film classic this week is Secrets and Lies, celebrating its 30th anniversary. Directed by Mike Lee, this 1996 drama follows Hortense, a successful black optometrist in London, who after the death of her adoptive mother decides to find her birth mother. Her search leads her to Cynthia, a white working class woman whose life is already full of strain, loneliness, and unresolved family pain. Renda Blevin plays Cynthia, and Mary and Jean Baptiste plays Hortense, and the power of the film comes from how carefully Lee lets the truth arrive. It's not a movie built on twists. It is built on recognition. It will talk, deflect, snap, apologize badly, reveal too much, reveal too little, and slowly expose the emotional architecture of a family that has been standing on cracks for years. Lee is one of the great filmmakers of ordinary human mess, and Secrets and Lives may be his most accessible masterpiece. It's funny, painful, generous, and devastating, without ever needing to underline itself. The famous family gathering near the end still plays like a controlled demolition of politeness. It's the kind of scene that reminds you drama does not require explosions. Sometimes it just requires a table, a secret, and people who have run out of places to hide. You can watch it on HBO Max or the Criterion Channel. And that wraps it for the August 21, 2026 edition of Indy 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 strange, keep it human, and keep it indie.
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