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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 26 movies from Independent Film Producers (IFP)
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
Jun 2020
In the US Midwest, plagued with opioid abuse and rising incarceration rates for women, three unforgettable mothers return home from prison to rebuild their lives after years of separation from their children.
Apr 2021
Raising Bertie is a longitudinal documentary feature following three young African American boys over the course of six years as they grow into adulthood in Bertie County, a rural African American-led community in Eastern North Carolina. Through the intimate portrayal of these boys, this powerful vérité film offers a rare in-depth look at the issues facing America's rural youth and the complex relationships between generational poverty, educational equity, and race. The evocative result is an experience that encourages us to recognize the value and complexity in lives all too often ignored.
Jun 2017
The story of a Muslim casket maker and ritual body washer in Newark, NJ who takes two young men under his wing to teach them how to live better lives.
Aug 2020
Set against the backdrop of the physician shortage and opioid epidemic in rural America, The Providers follows three healthcare providers in northern New Mexico. They work at El Centro, a group of safety-net clinics that offer care to all who walk through the doors, regardless of ability to pay. Amidst personal struggles that reflect those of their patients, the journeys of the providers unfold as they work to reach rural Americans who would otherwise be left out of the healthcare system. With intimate access, the documentary shows the transformative power of providers’ relationships with marginalized patients.
Apr 2018
When Jennifer Laude, a Filipina trans woman, is brutally murdered by a U.S. Marine, three women intimately invested in the case--an activist attorney, a transgender journalist and Jennifer's mother)--galvanize a political uprising, pursuing justice and taking on hardened histories of US imperialism.
Two teenagers, David and Hugo, meet by chance on a canoe ride in the Amazon. This documentary follows their lives as David begins a fair-trade certification system for oil production companies to help with the oil-waste problem in the Ecuadorian Amazon, while Hugo gets an American education that will allow him to return to his homelands as a leader.
Jun 2014
The Genius of Marian follows Pam White in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. Her son, the film maker, works with her as she attempts to write a book that tributes her mother, the artist Marian Steele.
Apr 2013
Eight-year-old Roger Court is in Venice expecting to reunite with his father, British diplomat Major Court (Trevor Howard), whom he hasn't seen in three years. Roger lives with his Aunt Rose since his mother abandoned him.
Jan 1954
Donte Clark's poetic voice was honed on the violent street corners of a struggling city. Yet rather than succumb to the pressures of Richmond, CA, Clark uses his artistic perspective to help save his city from itself.
Jul 2017
Iranian musician Shahin Najafi flees his homeland and heads to Cologne, Germany after harsh criticism by several clerics over the release of his song speaking out against human rights abuses resulted in a fatwa being issued.
Apr 2017
Bertrand, an accountant employed by a large London firm, is called to the office of the Managing Director, Dreuther, to explain a mistake in the accounts. Dreuther is highly impressed by the young accountant's skilful explanation of the error and, hearing that Bertrand is soon to marry his spirited young fiancée, tells him to spend the honeymoon not in Bournemouth, but Monte Carlo at the company s expense! However, events in the fabulous Mediterranean paradise do not work out quite as Bertrand had envisaged...
Sep 1956
Following the rise and fall of the new American oil boom, My Country No More paints an intimate portrait of a rural community in crisis, forced to confront the meaning of progress as they fight for a disappearing way of life.
Feb 2018
After three combat tours in Iraq, Alex Sutton attempts a fresh start hatching chickens and raising goats on 43 acres in rural North Carolina. Alex embraces life on the farm with his new love Jessica, but cycles between a state of heightened alert and “feeling zombified” from a cocktail of prescriptions meant to stabilize his injured mind. When Jessica becomes pregnant, the dark past Alex has tried to escape—the loss of his first family, the war he was forced to leave—closes in on him. The farm becomes another battleground. Farmer/Veteran attempts to reconcile the identity of a perfect soldier with the reality of a haunted man determined to hold onto the best chance at peace he’s ever known.
Apr 2016
When a young woman turns to the camera for refuge, she ends up with a firsthand account of what will become the deadliest man-made epidemic in United States history.
Oct 2021
Mentally ill. Deviant. Diseased. And in need of a cure. These were among the terms psychiatrists used to describe gay women and men in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. And as long as they were “sick”, progress toward equality was impossible. This documentary chronicles the battle waged by a small group of activists who declared war against a formidable institution – and won a crucial victory in the modern movement for LGBTQIA+ equality.
A dogged family-run paper in Iowa gives citizens the scoop on forces threatening to overwhelm their precarious small-town existence.
Jun 2021
Journalist Assia Boundaoui sets out to investigate long-brewing rumors that her quiet, predominantly Arab-American neighborhood was being monitored by the FBI.
A talented group of orphaned children in Swaziland create a fictional heroine and send her on a dangerous quest.
"The Pearl" explores the raw emotional and physical experience of being a middle aged to senior transgender woman against the backdrop of post-industrial logging towns in the Pacific Northwest. The film leans into the struggle of those who were reared and successful as men and have reached middle age or later with a burdensome secret that they can no longer keep.
Mar 2016