Amazon Prime: All the Great Movies You Never Heard Of

Well, what is there to say except that Amazon Prime Video is a film buffet gone totally overboard? With headlining popular ones hogging the limelight and tips of icebergs like Marriage Story and The Irishman, consider this galaxy undiscovered of all the other innumerable movies. Your hidden treasures, glazed over for excellent storytelling and unique points of view, have always been visited with truly unforgettable performances. This will provide a sense of cinematic greatness to any cinema purist or simply anyone who is scraping through the same films over and over again about the best-of lists for lesser-known Amazon Prime movies.

 Introduction: Unveil the Hidden Treasure

It certainly is innately rewarding to discover a film that still, for all intents and purposes, has managed to remain properly hidden. It is kind of like treasure found, except for beyond that, the experience is certainly not really all that much more rewarding relative to more popular dime a dozen mainstream blockbusters of the day I could see. To me, unknown films mean excitement and discovery, and each single film feels like I’m going on an adventure into uncharted territory.

I remember it was a drizzly weekend, and finally a person would start scraping some not-so-popular titles running in one corner of Amazon Prime when he gets some time. Biting under the blanket, I ended up watching a small, Lilliputian indie film, which I might have never watched under different circumstances. It was raw and emotional; I’d never seen anything like that before. This showed me there is excellence in the cinematic world beyond usual recommendations and adventures in meandering to find it.

What Truly Counts Unknown films really hold within them, very often, the real spirit of cinema. For most filmmakers, these are works of passion; the blood and sweat that goes into doing something big but mostly sans big-studio support or budgets. These are pieces rich in creativity where originality in stories unfolds, unorthodox procedures give rise to unconventional ideas.

Unknown films allow novices and new talent to grow. Many such renowned directors, actors, and writers began with films that nobody almost would have heard of. Once you watch the movie, you see them at the doorstep of their career, after which you will be able to appreciate more visibly the raw talent that, with time and contribution, proceeds to stardom.

Lesser-known films also provide a service to niche audiences. They would be those which deal with themes, cultures, and stories that would not ever connect with the masses but for those they evoke an emotional response with, it is a special piece of pretty special movies for every such view who begins personal connections from what they see on screen.

Best Lesser-Known Movies on Amazon Prime

Now, here are some of the best unknown films now streaming on Amazon Prime, according to genre: drama, thriller, and romance—even a documentary. That way, everybody can find something they like.

1.    The Vast of Night (2019)

Genre: Sci-Fi, Mystery

Director: Andrew Patterson

Plot: In the 1950s, over the little towns, two teens set out to discover a mysterious radio frequency and change the fate. The Vast of Night is a very taut and very well-narrated minimal film dependent on its dialogues and atmospheres.

Why It’s a Gem: The Vast of Night remains an extremely taut narrative on an extremely small budget, with brilliant action. Primarily aided by the very atypical construction of this film—that is to say, of a film made in long takes and—one could argue—a real-time storyline, it continues to craft an experience of engrossment rarely matched in today’s cinemas.

2. Paterson (2016)

Genre: Drama

Director: Jim Jarmusch

Abstract: The film is focused on a story about a bus driver who is the midnight poet of the city of Paterson, New Jersey. He seems to live humbly and anonymously, but into that aspect, the mundanity of life as Paterson gets his inspiration from the simplest things in his day-to-day activities.

Why It’s a Gem: Paterson is a beautiful meditation on life’s little moments; it is a film that really glorifies ordinary life and finds verse within the day-to-day. It represents an exercise of control by Adam Driver while Jim Jarmusch pays quiet, thoughtful attention to something our world and culture are currently lacking.

Storyline: Leave No Trace is an exhilarating comedic work that unravels the story of a man and a girl who have struggled to survive deep in the woods hoping Oregon for many years. When news breaks of their presence, they have to return to the same society they had left to pick up their pieces of life—experiences and memories—more so in another life. Leave No Trace deeply explains the emotional parts, survival, self-sufficiency, and the relations between a parent and a child.

Why It’s a Gem: Leave No Trace is a silent powerhouse of a movie and deconstructs what it really means to be alive on the edges of human society. This very sentiment brought into life loudly thanks in part to Ben Foster and Thomason McKenzie, two actors who deliver a raw and heartfelt performance that truly is an exercise in missed words. This is a film that does justice in many ways to quiet storytelling and human connection.

4. A Ghost Story (2017)

Drama, Fantasy

Director: David Lowery

Synopsis: A Ghost Story is a haunting and poetic film about love, loss, and time. It tells the story of a man who has just died but turns into a ghost to see life for what it has become and the changes it had developed without his own being present.

Why It’s a Gem: This is an extravagantly refreshing perspective on the ghost-story genre—one that progresses very slowly and contains very few dialogues, giving way to letting someone be attracted to the impermanency of life. A Ghost Story is an achingly beautiful movie—it is bound to stick in your head long after the credits have started rolling in.

5. The Handmaiden (2016)

Genre: Thriller, Romance

Director: Park Chan-wok

Plot: Handmaiden is set in the 1930s in a country named Korea, set at about the time when a poor young woman, adopted to be a Japanese heiress’ handmaiden, is recruited by a con man with the intention to defraud her. It has a visually gorgeous, consummate plot, full of detailed knitting while concurrently being of deceit, desire and betrayal in one line.

Why to Watch: This is a lot more intense a romance, and sometimes the watching of the imagery just leaves one in disbelief. Flawless direction of Park Chan-wok holds you in suspense until the very last second. The film plays with conventions of some of the usual tropes, putting an intense, original approach onto some very well-trodden genres.

6. The Florida Project (2017)

Genre: Drama

Director: Sean Baker

Synopsis: The Florida Project chronicles the summer that a six-year girl spends inside a budget motel located in a working-class district with her very destitute mom, near the Disney World. Basically it is a film about there being a sense of wonder created by a young woman in spite of all the odds put upon them.

Why it’s a must-watch: The Florida Project is something so very sad, and at the same time, so profoundly beautiful. It has an outstanding cast and the acting is quite masterly, with Brooklynn Prince leading the newbies. Sean Baker brought out authenticity and tenderness that the story needed.

Summary: Cold War is a passionate love story of two people set against the background of postwar Europe. It is based on the story of a musician who loves a singer: a love story further spanning decades and borders, torn by political and personal conflicts.

Why it’s a gem: Cold War is such a beautifully written, fiercely romantic tale of love through the storm of unsettled times. Black-and-white really works well to make things timeless, and supreme acting at both ends makes Cold War just achingly beautiful: a reminder of how the magic of the human spirit can never be lost and how the power of love can actually sweep one off their feet.

How to Discover More Hidden Gems on Amazon Prime Amazon Prime boasts a staggering total of 1,098,496 titles. But finding hidden gems in this vast selection can sure become a tough pursuit. Some help in unearthing such films follows. End of Free Text *** End of free text ***

Curated lists: Most film critics and websites are always updating their “underseen/underrated” lists, which are idle. That will be a great opportunity for someone to be exposed to films that are off their radar.

So, watch out for film festivals. More often than not, films that travel to film festivals oftentimes end up on Amazon Prime. These movies are hence not in the great circulation in the movie halls but have received great critical appreciation and truly deserve it.

Follow Directors and Actors There’s no denying the fact that a good film largely depends on having a good chemistry between the actor and the director. More often than not, this combination does create a few movies that are either an actor’s debut or are less popular but are worth your time.

Amazon Recommendations: Yes, the recommendation algorithm on Amazon Prime occasionally throws up some gems. If you’ve watched a few really obscure films, the next thing it will do is start showing you films of a similar kind, and half of them you’ve probably never even heard of.

Conclusion: Embrace This

It’s almost an adventure trawling through Amazon Prime and these unknown movies that haven’t got billions of marketing dollars behind them. Maybe that’s just the true way the world has in store for us in terms of creativity: real and authentic, maybe a bit off-filtered view of the world.

With all this content uploaded, fortitude in looking for indie masterpieces from foreign lands or the documentaries that have flown under the radar will be so well rewarded. These are really only reminders of how powerful tools for storytelling it is and how many different voices now get to contribute toward the richness of the tapestry that is cinema.

Next time you’re browsing through Amazon Prime, take a shot on one of those random movies you’ve never heard of. You might just stumble into your next favorite movie.