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Scott Barley is an artist-filmmaker based in Scotland. His work is primarily concerned with the anthropocene, nature, darkness, absence, cosmology, phenomenology, and mysticism. He has exhibited at film festivals and art galleries worldwide, including ICA London, Jeu de Paume Paris, Doclisboa, Karlovy Vary IFF, Venice Biennale, QAGOMA, MoMA Río de Janeiro, and MoCA Busan.

Since 2015, Scott has made films solo, switching from ARRI cameras and larger crews to almost exclusively shooting his films on iPhone, and carrying out all aspects of production (direction, writing, cinematography, sound, post-production, and distribution) himself, with an emphasis on poetics and environmental sustainability.

His films have been been the subject of critical analysis, with essays in Sight and Sound, MUBI Notebook, Screen, and Sabzian, as well as conferences and theses at the University of Melbourne, Goldsmiths, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris, University of Porto, and Stavanger Art Museum Norway.

His short film, Hinterlands was voted one of the best films of 2016 in Sight and Sound's annual film poll. Scott's first feature, Sleep Has Her House was released in 2017. It received the Jury Award for Best Film at Fronteira International Documentary & Experimental Film Festival, Brazil. It later received nominations in Sight and Sound’s 2017 and 2018 annual best film polls.

In 2018, Barley co-founded Obscuritads — an international collective focused on “rendering the invisible visible” through cinema, fine art, digital ecologies and their intersection — with filmmaker, Mikel Guillen (Toronto) and curator and programmer, Miquel Escudero Diéguez (Paris, Barcelona). American filmmaker, Phil Solomon (1954–2019) is an honorary member.

In 2020, film historian, and Jean-Luc Godard's editor for Le Livre d’Image (Cannes Film Festival’s Special Palme d'Or Winner) Nicole Brenez cited Sleep Has Her House as one of the ten best films of the decade, after previously writing that “[Barley’s] films renew our conception of visuality”, and describing him as “one of the most gifted visual poets of his generation.”

In 2022, Sleep Has Her House was included in the decennial Sight and Sound poll of The Greatest Films of All Time, receiving votes as one of the ten greatest films ever made in both the Critics’ and Directors' polls. A revised and remastered version of the film was completed in 2023. 

Scott has taught Film, Television and Visual Arts at institutions internationally from foundation to doctorate levels, including at Winchester School of Art, Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, University of Chile, and Centre for Visual Communications Belgrade. He has worked at Falmouth University as an Associate Lecturer in Film and Television since 2020, and as a Research Associate at the Sound/Image Cinema Lab since 2024. He has worked as an external mentor for Film London's FLAMIN Fellowship programme and L’Alternativa Professionals Barcelona, advising on all stages of film production. He is available for lectures, masterclasses, private tuition and consultation services worldwide.

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

Scott's second feature film, The Sea Behind Her Head (funded by the British Film Institute (BFI) and Doc Society) is currently in post-production.