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What’s a film without distribution? The Popcorn List sets out to make sure that doesn’t happen to the best indies.

Founded by Lela Meadow-Conner and Barbara Twist, the inaugural annual survey spotlights 20 features that debuted at major or regional film festivals this past year and come highly recommended by festival programmers. Nineteen out of the 20 movies have reviews on Letterboxd, despite not yet having theatrical or digital distribution in the U.S. All 20 have won awards — including Audience Awards and Jury Awards — at festivals like Sundance and SXSW.

Billed as being The Black List for undistributed films, the 2024 Popcorn List highlights independent films that are currently still without domestic U.S. distribution, like the documentary “Chasing Chasing Amy” about the making of Kevin Smith’s comedy.

The other 18 are: “Ajoomma,” “American Pot Story: Oaksterdam,” “Art for Everybody,” “Asog,” “Blood Sweat & Beers,” “Caterpillar,” “Citizen Sleuth,” “City of Wind,” “Crows Are White,...

With the Sundance Film Festival and South by Southwest in the rearview mirror, you might think that the western half of the country has no other film-festival representation for the next few months. Ah, but you’d be wrong; now in its 14th year, the Phoenix Film Festival is coming up in merely a couple weeks, beginning its eight days of screenings, seminars, events, and more, on Thursday, April 3. In advance of the festival, I spoke with Jason Carney, Executive Director of the Phoenix Film Foundation, about this year’s opening and closing films, its teenage-focused educational seminars, and everything in between.

Q: Is there an overriding theme to this year’s slate of films at the Phoenix Film Festival? If so, what is it?

A: There really isn’t a theme to our programming this year, or really ever. We try to program the best quality and variety of...

The beginning of April, for those in the Southwest, heralds an all-new Phoenix Film Festival. This year, the Phoenix Film Festival kicks off its 13th annual edition with impressive celebrity guests, independent feature premieres, seminars, workshops, parties, and more. The festival, which runs from April 4 to April 11, boasts some star-studded new films and other events as it holds court at the Harkins Scottsdale 101, well-known for its Cine Capri theater, the largest non-imax screen in all of Arizona. With films like The Spectacular Now, The East, The Way, Way Back, and The Kings of Summer among the spotlight presentations, this year’s Phoenix Film Festival may prove to be one of the hidden gems of the festival circuit.

The Phoenix Film Festival, which has been running every year since 2000, had quite the act to follow after last year’s festival. Festival president Chris Lamont said, “We broke attendance records, had more screening sell-outs than ever before,...