Scott Barley is an artist-filmmaker and Teaching Fellow in Film Directing at Edinburgh College of Art. His filmography focuses on creating sensorial and contemplative experiences that challenge traditional anthropocentric narrative structures. Recurrent themes in his work include nature, darkness, visible absence, cosmology, phenomenology, and mysticism.

For over a decade, Scott has embraced a radically independent approach to filmmaking, transitioning from ARRI cameras and traditional crew structures to a solo, environmentally sustainable practice primarily filming on iPhone, combined with his paintings and drawings, and personally handling all aspects of production, from direction and cinematography to sound design, post-production, and distribution.

His work has been exhibited in over 50 countries across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Australia. Notable venues include ICA London, Jeu de Paume Paris, Doclisboa, Karlovy Vary IFF, Venice Biennale, QAGOMA, MoMA Río de Janeiro, Korean Film Archive, and MoCA Busan. His films have been broadcast on ARTE and Canal180, and have been written about in Sight and Sound, MUBI Notebook, Film Comment, Frieze, Screen, and Sabzian. His filmography has been the subject of academic analysis at conferences at the University of Melbourne (with Prof Sean Cubitt), Goldsmiths University of London (Dr Wood Roberdeau), Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris (Dr Nicole Brenez), and University of Porto (Dr Nadin Mai). 

He has exhibited with influential figures in world cinema and contemporary art, including David Lynch, Béla Tarr, Chantal Akerman, Philippe Grandrieux, Abbas Kiarostami, Nathaniel Dorsky, Werner Herzog, Tacita Dean, David Cronenberg, James Benning, Tsai Ming-Liang, and Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel.

His first feature film, Sleep Has Her House (2017), received the Jury Award for Best Film at Fronteira International Documentary & Experimental Film Festival, Brazil. Dr Nicole Brenez, film historian and Jean-Luc Godard's researcher and editor for The Image Book (Winner of Cannes Film Festival's Special Palme d'Or) cited Sleep Has Her House as one of the ten best films of the decade, writing that Barley's films "renew our conception of visuality," and describing him as "one of the most gifted visual poets of his generation." The film was later included in the decennial Sight and Sound poll of The Greatest Films of All Time in 2022, receiving votes in both the Critics' and Directors' polls.

His most recent short film, A Ladder (2025), is a collaboration with musician Hara Alonso, commissioned by Canal180, Culturgest, and Gnration, Portugal. Following its television broadcast debut in March 2025, the film had its cinema premiere in May 2025 as part of a David Lynch in memoriam retrospective in Freiburg, Germany, where it was screened alongside Lynch's seminal work Eraserhead.

Outside of his own filmmaking, Barley has worked as a cinematographer and multimedia artist on various projects, including Tadhg O'Sullivan's To the Moon (2020) and Saeed Taji Farouky's upcoming feature film, Standing At The Ruins. He served as a production consultant on Silent Friend (2025) by Academy Award nominee Ildikó Enyedi (On Body and Soul, Golden Bear winner, 2017) starring Léa Seydoux and Tony Leung Chiu-wai.

Danish film critic and former director of the European Documentary Network, Tue Steen Müller has described him as the "Anselm Kiefer of cinema." 

His second feature film, The Sea Behind Her Head, funded by the British Film Institute (BFI) and Doc Society, is currently in production, alongside several new short films and multimedia works funded by Creative Scotland.