By the mid-aughts, the Sundance market had been thoroughly professionalized and corporatized, most of the big-ticket purchases made in Park City the work of canny careerist operators with Hollywood ambitions. But then there was a mutant strain of microbudget movies that had begun to appear around this time which were of a different order altogether; there were no stylistic pyrotechnics here, no whip smart badinage à la Tarantino… in fact the characters in these modest, performance-driven films sometimes seemed to have difficulty cogently articulating a single thought, hence the designation they would eventually be grouped under: “mumblecore.” Twenty years after the opening shots of this quiet—even incoherent at times—revolution in American independent film, we look back at some of its most enduring works, including Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs, and Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation, with Bujalski appearing in person to discuss his work and probe the lasting legacy of this most unassuming and introverted “movement.”

This series runs from June 14 to June 29, 2025 at the Metrograph in New York. Learn more.