5 Movies from Cannes You Can Watch Right Now
Program your own festival week.
Sadly, due a scheduling conflict, I won’t make it to the Palais this year to cover the Cannes Film Festival. I’m sad not to be getting an early glimpse of what will inevitably be some of the year’s best—although my eyes and ears on the ground are reporting I might not be missing that much this year. Still, there’s some stuff getting talked about that I can’t wait to see when it finally hits.
Speaking of which—one of the major downsides of Cannes coverage is that many of the movies people talk about frequently aren’t available to watch until 9-12 months later. Since most of our attention spans are not that long, often the less flashy, smaller titles can end up going overlooked by the time they’re actually released.
So this year in lieu of my Cannes coverage, I’m going to talk about the movies from Cannes 2025 that just recently came out on streaming or VOD in the US, so you can get your Cannes fix right now. No waiting required.
If you followed my festival coverage last year, you’ll have already heard of most of these, but since I’ve had a year to reflect and rewatch many of these without the festival haze (which can both elevate and detract from a film)—I’ll give my updated feelings on each. How have these movies held up since I saw them a year ago at the festival, and would I still recommend them now?
The Big Hits (Hulu)
Hopefully you’ve seen most of the standouts from last year’s Cannes already, Sentimental Value, It Was Just An Accident, The Secret Agent, and Sirāt, all got some Oscar Buzz and these four held up as some of my favorite movies of the year. I highly recommend them all. Especially It Was Just An Accident, an Iranian film that is even more relevant now that when it release at last year’s festival. I made a video about the movie, which not many people watched, and I wish it had gotten more recognition and discussion.
The Secret Agent was one of the films I missed at Cannes and was anxiously waiting to catch. It was worth the wait. I’ve seen it twice and it would have easily made my best movie of 2025 list if I had seen it in time.
All four of these movies are out now on streaming in the US on Hulu, so crack that Hulu app open if you haven’t in a while, or get yourself a free trial and watch four absolute cinematic bangers back to back.
But as I said my main goal here is to point you towards some of the less recognized work from last year so I’m going to skip over most things that got a wide theatrical release and focus on films that dropped with less of a splash but which I still think are worth your time.
The Love That Remains (Criterion)
I have not seen a single other critic talk about this film since it came out so I feel like I’m carrying its mantle all on my own. The Love That Remains is an Icelandic film from Hlynur Pálmason, whose last movie, Godland, I also loved. This movie is a significant departure from Godland in many ways (contemporary instead of period, much less dark), but has a similar attention to beautiful imagery and contemplative pacing.
The story has three overlapping threads: We follow Anna, an artist and mother as she raiser her three kids and works on her art (which involves using rust, weather, and time to stain canvases with beautiful geometric patterns). We also follow Magnus, her ex-partner, on his commercial fishing expeditions. Finally we get a thread following the quiet domestic drama and everyday life where the two overlap. Tying all these threads together are vignettes of surrealist punctuation.
I can see why the commercial market didn’t go bananas over this. It doesn’t really have a recognizable genre and treats plot with a great deal of suspicion, but I think people should give it a chance! It’s totally original, and (I know I keep saying this but I can’t stress it enough) is really quite beautiful. I wish there were people in the US making movies like this.
One of the movie’s most stand-out features is the way it incorporates documentary inflected filmmaking throughout: when we see Anna working on her art we’re clearly seeing a document of the process of creating actual works of art. Anna may be a fictional character, but the process of making “her art” for the film, and the end result, are not fictional. I’ve seen few films really incorporate the seasons into the narrative in as visceral a way as this one does, and the way the seasons and time intertwine with the creation of the art itself is lovely. I find the finished work we see in the film really stunning, and get a lot of enjoyment out of watching the artistic process on screen. Similarly with Magnus’s work as a commercial fisherman, we’re shown the work he does in rigorous vérité. It really feels like a documentary about two lives in Iceland, and a fictional film got smashed together and it really works for me.
The second thing this movie does almost better than almost any other movie I’ve seen—is portray an incredibly realistic dynamic between the three siblings. The child actors are great, and there are many tiny scenes that are so true to the experience of siblinghood that they almost feel like they had to have been improvised (complementary). Slice-of-life feels like such a played out term, but when a movie can genuinely capture some slices of life which I’ve never seen captured so accurately it feels notable.
I rewatched it recently and enjoyed it just as much the second time around, if not more. If any of the above sounds interesting to you, please check it out. The Love That Remains is now available to rent or purchase on VOD or you can stream it on the Criterion Channel.
2000 Meters to Andriivka (PBS)
I’ve already written a lot about 2000 Meters to Andriivka—Mystyslav Chernov’s second devastating and heart-pounding document of Russians ongoing invasion of Ukraine. This film was, I believe, brutally snubbed by the Oscars, a move which I’m not entirely sure was not to some extent politically motivated. Regardless, it’s an important film, and one that I think will outlive some of the other documentaries nominated to eventually recognized for what it is, which is one of the most significant films about war ever made.
Thanks to PBS (which has experience significant funding cut recently) you can stream the film right now for free. Support your local PBS station!
Resurrection (Criterion)
What a film. Bi Gan’s Resurrection is a soaring, utterly unrestrained, shoot for the fences, all-timer that sweeps you up in its swirl of shifting genre, form, and style. I think this film adopts more distinct modes of filmmaking than I’ve ever seen incorporated into one work. If that sounds like a gimmick, well then it’s one of the most impressive gimmicks ever executed in film. Build cinema up into something mythic, burn it all to the ground, and resurrect it. I can’t really purport to know what exactly this movies is about (Life! Death? Cinema! Samsara!) but it’s the kind of maximalist feast that I’m just glad to have the opportunity to behold.
It includes, among other things, one of the most spectacular long takes I’ve ever seen. Let it wash over you.
Now available to stream in the US on the Criterion Channel.
Nouvelle Vague (Netflix)
NonDē folks listen up! You should be watching this to get in the punk filmmaking spirit. The drive to break free from the system and its rules and just shoot something has a long history in film. Indie sometimes refers to a film’s financial status, but there’s also indie as a state of mind. Sometimes I think this is part of what NonDē is getting at. Godard and his 1960 French New Wave film Breathless are one of the most significant touchstones in that history, and Richard Linklater has been on of the contemporary American filmmakers most dedicated to carrying forward that spirit, so it makes a lot of sense to me that Linklater was drawn to make this film. File it under light fare, movies about making movies, and, hangout films—but also file it under immaculate period filmmaking.
Not incredibly profound or groundbreaking, or anything, but very fun and definitely something you should watch if you’re trying to get inspired to just go do things. I also think it actually captures the sense of camaraderie, lighthearted fun, petty infighting, and stress that usually comes along with an indie film set quite well.
Streaming now on Netflix.
The Sound of Falling (MUBI)
I was hoping this one would get more buzz on its release, but it seems to have fallen on relatively deaf ears. (Forgive me). As dark as it is tender, Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling has haunted me for the past year. It’s one of those movies that has me grouping around for a reference point I can use to describe it. Tarkovsky perhaps? The beautiful, warm cinematography, combined with the film’s earthen textures certainly remind me of films like The Mirror, and even Stalker. It also seems to invoke a something the way the Russian director’s work often does.
Sound of Falling is the story of women across time, set in and around a single farmhouse. Much has changed for women, yet much remains the same. The darkness of its shadows means it is probably not one I’ll happily revisit very frequently, but the sound design is some of the most evocative I’ve heard in years, and there are a few images from this film that I think will remain with me for the rest of my life.
Now available to stream in the US on MUBI.
That’s all folks! I plan to be back on the croisette reporting live in 2027, until then, I’m stuck like most people waiting to see which murmurings from May will materialize into the end-of-year sensations. I have my own things to murmur about, so I hope you’ll stay tuned.