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 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 work has been exhibited across Europe, The Americas, 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, including the University of Melbourne (with Prof Sean Cubitt), Goldsmiths University of London (Dr Wood Roberdeau), Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris (Dr Nicole Brenez), University of Malta (Dr Joe Kickasola), and the 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 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.

Barley has worked as a cinematographer, multimedia artist, and in post-production on projects including Tadhg O'Sullivan's To the Moon (2020) and Saeed Taji Farouky's Standing At The Ruins (Final Cut in Venice, 82nd Venice International Film Festival). He served as a production consultant on Silent Friend by Academy Award nominee Ildikó Enyedi (FIPRESCI Prize, 82nd Venice International Film Festival), and as colourist and visual artist for Kier-La Janisse's The Occupant of the Room, which premiered at Sitges Film Festival 2025.

Outside of filmmaking, Barley has released multiple works of drone music, a parallel practice that continues his explorations of texture, resonance, and atmosphere through sound. His music has been performed and re-interpreted at venues in Europe and The Americas, including the Museum of Contemporary Art MAR, Argentina and the Museum of Musical Instruments Leipzig, Germany. His score from Sleep Has Her House was featured by the musician Ethel Cain as part of her BBC 6 Music Artist in Residence in 2025.

Barley is the co-founder of Obscuritads, an international collective dedicated to “rendering the invisible visible”—with filmmaker Mikel Guillen (Toronto) and curator and programmer Miquel Escudero Diéguez (Barcelona). American filmmaker Phil Solomon (1954–2019) is an honorary member.

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.