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5 Indie Movies This Week: Pillion, The President’s Cake, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, & More · Indie Film Weekly

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly, your roundup of new indie releases for the week of February 6, 2026.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Glenn Reynolds, and if you've been watching movies at home all week, I support that choice.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: But still, there's one thing your couch cannot do, and a theater can.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: A theater makes you commit.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot pause when it gets awkward.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot just check one thing on your phone.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: You sit there in the dark and you let the movie drive for a while.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a small act of trust, and it's the closest thing we have to a public square that does not require you to argue with anyone.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have three new theatrical releases: a romance that turns power dynamics into a weird, funny coming of age story, a tense kid-sized mission set under a dictatorship where a simple dessert becomes a survival problem, and a father and two sons moving through a city on a political fault line, trying to find each other before the date breaks apart.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: We then close with a cult musical classic that turned identity, heartbreak, and rock songs into a battle cry.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: This episode of Indy Film Weekly is brought to you by Circus Road Films, helping independent filmmakers find their audience since 2006.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Learn more at CircusRodefilms.com.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Our first film in theaters this week is Pillion, directed by Harry Lighton, and it's a romance that plays like a dark joke until it starts feeling oddly tender.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Colin is a shy, socially awkward guy living a small life with his parents, and he has no idea what he wants beyond wanting something to finally happen.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then he meets Ray, a leather-clad biker who carries himself like he owns the room, and Ray takes a very direct interest in him.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Their relationship becomes a BDSM dynamic that is not treated as a shock headline, it's treated as the structure of the story.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Colin is pulled into Ray's world with rules, rituals, and a kind of discipline that is both erotic and emotionally destabilizing.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny, it is uncomfortable, and is honest about how attraction can be thrilling and also confusing.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Lighton lets the comedy come from behavior, not from cheap jokes, and the film keeps circling one question.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is this love?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is this control?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it both at the same time?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Harry Melling gives Colin a wounded sweetness that makes the stakes feel real.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And Alexander Skarsgard plays Ray with a calm that can read as confidence or menace depending on the moment.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a risky movie that stays human even when it gets wild.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Our second film in theaters this week is The President's Cake, directed by Hassan Hadi, and it takes a simple premise and turns it into a tight moral pressure cooker.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: The story is set in Iraq in the 1990s, during the era of sanctions and scarcity, where daily life is shaped by fear, shortages, and public performance.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: A young girl named Lamia is assigned a task at school that sounds harmless on paper.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Bake a cake for the president's birthday.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: In practice, it is mandatory, and it comes with consequences if she fails.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Lamia is poor, ingredients are scarce, and adults around her understand the danger even when they do not say it out loud.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the film becomes a kid's quest as Lamia and a friend move through the city trying to find flour, sugar, eggs, anything they can afford while dodging authority and bad luck.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hadi directs with empathy and a steady sense of suspense.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: The movie shows how political systems shrink down into everyday choices, who helps you, who sells you out, what you are forced to pretend you believe.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a coming of age story because Lamia learns fast what the world is and what it costs to stay safe inside it.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Our third film in theaters this week is My Father's Shadow, directed by Akinola Davies Jr., and it's a story about family told through motion, memory, and a city that never stops talking.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Two young brothers spend a day with their father, Falarin, a man who is present now but not fully known to them.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: The setting is Lagos in 1993, on a day charged with political tension when the country's future feels like it could tilt at any moment.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: The father takes the boys across the city through streets and crowds and small errands that become big emotional territory.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: On the surface it's a day out.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Underneath it's a negotiation of trust, of disappointment, of the question kids always ask without using words, are you staying this time?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Davies Jr.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: shoots Lagos with intimacy and scale.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: You feel the heat, the noise, the energy, and the sense that history is pressing in from every direction.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: The film's not built on speeches, it's built on glances, small jokes, awkward silences, and the way a father tries to be a hero to his sons while clearly carrying his own damage.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's tender without being sentimental, and it captures something rare, the way a single day can change the story you tell yourself about a parent.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So in theaters this week, that's Pillion, The President's Cake, and My Father's Shadow.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: For home viewing this week, The Go Getter, directed by Martin Hines, is a 2007 Indie Road movie that still hits because it understands grief as a kind of restlessness.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Mercer is 19, his mother has died, and he's left with a hole in his life that he does not know how to name.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So he does something impulsive and very stupid.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: He steals a station wagon from a car wash and takes off to find his estranged half-brother, the one person who feels like unfinished business.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Almost immediately, the car's owner, Kate, calls the phone in the glove compartment, and what could be a chase becomes a strange partnership.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: She lets him keep the car if he checks in and tells her about the trip.
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  SPEAKER_00: And their conversations turn into a lifeline for both of them.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: The film is quiet, funny, in a bruised way, and full of the kind of small encounters that only happen on the road.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Lou Taylor Pucci plays Mercer as earnest and scrambled, and Zoe Dechanelle gives Kate a wry warmth that keeps the movie from tipping into self-pity.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Heinz keeps the direction simple and lets the emotional shifts sneak up on you.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: This one is available to rent or buy on Amazon, and it's also available free with ads on Fossum.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you want a gentle reset that still feels like life, this is a good one.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: This week's indie classic is Hedwig and the Angry Inch, directed by John Cameron Mitchell, celebrating its 25th anniversary.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: This film is not just a cult favorite, it's a blueprint for how to turn personal pain into performance without sanding down the rough edges.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hedwig is a punk glam rock singer who has been through a lot, including a botched surgery and a marriage that turns into abandonment, and she is left trying to build a self from whatever pieces are still hers.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: The structure is simple and brilliant.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Hedwig and her band play shows in smaller venues while shadowing the tour of Tommy, the younger singer who stole Hedwig's songs and turned them into mainstream success.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: That chase gives the film momentum, but the real engine is Hedwig's voice in monologues, in costume, and in the songs, which are written in a hit like Confession and Joke in the same breath.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Mitchell directs with bold theatricality, but the emotion is real, and the movie keeps returning to the question of wholeness, what it means, who gets to claim it, and whether you can live without it.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: The music created with Steven Trask is the kind of soundtrack you do not outgrow.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: It grows with you.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty five years later, Hedwig still feels fearless, still funny, still aching, and still generous to anyone who has ever felt misfiled by the world.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's Indy Film Weekly for February 6, 2026.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe, leave a rating, and share it with a friend who's always looking for something good to watch.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Until next week, keep it honest, keep it human, and keep it indie.