These two terms are used interchangeably in film coverage, in streaming categories, and in critical discourse. They mean different things. The conflation has practical consequences for how you find films worth watching - because the trail you follow when you're looking for one is not the trail that leads to the other.
INDIE IS AN INDUSTRY TERM
'Indie' - short for independent - is an industry term. It describes a film's production model: a film produced outside the major studio system, without the financing, distribution infrastructure, and creative oversight of a major studio. An indie film can look like a studio film, have studio-level production values, employ A-list stars, and follow every commercial convention of studio filmmaking. What makes it indie is its funding structure and its relationship to the studio distribution apparatus.
The American indie tradition - which is the primary referent when English-language film criticism says 'indie' - runs from the Sundance-era independent films of the 1980s and 90s through the current landscape of Blumhouse, A24, and Neon. These are independent in the financing sense; they are not necessarily independent in the artistic sense. A24 releases Hereditary (horror, mainstream-accessible) and The Zone of Interest (formally demanding art cinema) under the same indie label. The label describes the business model, not the formal register.
ART HOUSE IS A FORMAL AND PROGRAMMING TERM
'Art house' is a formal and programming term. It describes a mode of cinema characterised by: formal self-consciousness, prioritising the director's artistic vision over commercial convention, willingness to sacrifice narrative accessibility for formal or thematic complexity, and a relationship to the European and international cinema traditions that developed outside Hollywood. The term comes from the specific type of cinema - the art house cinema - that programmes this kind of film.
Art house cinema is not defined by its production model. A Studio Ghibli film is produced by a large studio infrastructure and is formal art cinema. A $100,000 American debut feature may be indie in production terms and entirely conventional in formal terms. The distinction is about the film's relationship to formal convention, not its relationship to the studio system.
THE OVERLAP AND THE GAP
The overlap is real: there are many indie films that are also art house films - formally demanding, director-driven works that happen to be produced outside the studio system. The Safdie Brothers' Good Time (2017), Kelly Reichardt's complete filmography, Barry Jenkins' Moonlight before it became a studio acquisition - indie in production, art house in formal register.
The gap is also real: there are mainstream-register films produced outside the studio system (most of what plays at multiplex independent screens is indie but not art house), and there are formally serious films produced within studio infrastructure (several Park Chan-wook films, certain Scorsese films, everything Denis Villeneuve has made since Arrival).
WHY THE DISTINCTION MATTERS PRACTICALLY
When a streaming platform categorises its content as 'independent and art house,' it is collapsing a distinction that produces specific navigational errors. The viewer looking for formally challenging cinema who searches the 'indie' category will find formally challenging cinema and a much larger volume of commercially conventional films produced outside major studio distribution. The viewer who follows the 'art house' framing and goes to MUBI will find primarily the formally serious cinema the art house term actually describes.
The distinction also matters for criticism. Critiquing a formally conventional indie film for not being challenging is critiquing the wrong object - it was never trying to be challenging; it was trying to be a quality genre film outside the studio system. Critiquing a formally demanding art house film for being inaccessible may also be critiquing the wrong object - accessibility may not be the primary formal commitment. Knowing which category you're in changes what the criteria for success are.
The label describes the business model, not the formal register.