Being an independent film fan is full of surprises, as each slate of festival releases brings a new wave of emerging filmmakers, breakout stars, and established actors playing against type in bold films. But it’s hard to imagine that even the biggest cultural omnivore could have predicted that 2024 would spark a renaissance in Fred Durst’s acting career.

The Limp Bizkit frontman, who helped pioneer the nu metal genre throughout the ’90s by combining hip-hop and rock on albums with poetic titles like “Three Dollar Bill, Y’all,” and “Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water,” has been a sporadic presence in movies for the past quarter century. Aside from a handful of small roles in the 2000s, he’s best known to cinephiles as the director of “The Fanatic,” the infamous 2019 stalker thriller starring John Travolta as an autistic man named Moose that somehow manages to be more offensive than it sounds.