10 Best Movies and Shows to Watch on Kanopy — For Free!

See them right now (all you need is a library card)

Thom Geier,

AARP

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Published March 17, 2025

Robert Downey Jr. in 'Chaplain'

TriStar/Courtesy Everett Collection

Kanopy may be the best streamer that you may not have heard of. The platform has carved out a niche to serve colleges and universities as well as patrons of public libraries who can set up a free account with their library cards (assuming your local library belongs to the Kanopy network — find out here). The deep catalog of titles skew heavily toward fare that you don’t typically find on Netflix and other mainstream streamers: documentaries, foreign language films, educational kids programming and older films that even major services like Max and Paramount+ don’t bother to offer, even though they still own the rights. (The promise of being able to watch any old movie or TV show on demand seems to have waned as media conglomerates look to cut costs, streamline offerings and, in many cases, favor mediocrity over quality.)

Luckily, Kanopy offers a cornucopia of content for those seeking quality movies that are frequently off the beaten path, from the early films of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory like Maurice and The Bostonians (as well as their Oscar-winning hit Howards End) to Oscar-nominated international films like the 1988 biopic Camille Claudel and the 2015 Oscar winner Ida. Check with your local library about availability; many library systems also limit the number of titles you can stream per month. Here are our picks of some of the best Kanopy has to offer right now.

Camille Claudel (1988)

Isabelle Adjani, now 69, lights up the screen in this French-language biopic of the sculptor Camille Claudel, whose remarkable career has been largely overshadowed by her teacher and lover, Auguste Rodin, played by Gerard Depardieu, 76, at the height of his swoon-worthiness. Adjani’s performance is riveting, and she seems to melt into the role no matter what age her character happens to be in any given scene.

Watch it: Camille Claudel

Chaplin (1992)

Robert Downey Jr., 59, scored his first Oscar nomination in the title role in Richard Attenborough’s biopic of the silent-film star. Despite a rather conventional script, the actor turns in a riveting central performance, nailing both Chaplin’s British accent as well as his distinctive mannerisms (and walking style) while convincingly playing the actor from youth to old age. Plus, Downey did all his own stunts.

Watch it: Chaplin

Force Majeure (2014)

Swedish director Ruben Östlund holds a dark mirror to the human condition in this taut domestic drama (which inspired a forgettable American remake, Downhill, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 64, and Will Ferrell, 57). Businessman Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke, 54) is on a skiing vacation with his wife and two young daughters when a controlled avalanche momentarily appears to threaten them at the luxury resort’s outdoor deck restaurant. Tomas panics, running away and leaving his family behind – a momentary lapse in judgment that has a snowball effect for everyone.

Watch it: Force Majeure

Freaks and Geeks (1999)

Kanopy offers the one-season NBC dramedy that was truly ahead of its time: an unblinking look at high school social cliques in the 1980s created by Paul Feig, 62 (Bridesmaids) and executive produced by Judd Apatow, 57 (The 40 Year-Old Virgin). The show has developed a cult following, partly because it launched the careers of stars like James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and Linda Cardellini.

Watch it: Freaks and Geeks

Hoop Dreams (1994)

Steve James’s documentary, shot in Chicago over the course of five years, remains one of the finest sports films of all time. The film focuses on two Black teenagers whose ambition to one day become NBA All-Stars leads them on a remarkable journey, including a 90-minute commute (each way) from inner-city Chicago to a mostly white suburban high school renowned for getting players into top college programs. You feel embedded in the lives of these young men as they face obstacles that touch on how America handles inequities in race, class, and educational opportunities.

Watch it: Hoop Dreams

Howards End (1992)

Director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant collaborated on a series of literary adaptations that dominated the indie film scene of the 1980s and ‘90s. Howards End, starring Anthony Hopkins, 87, and Emma Thompson, 65 (who won a Best Actress Oscar for the film), was the third film by the duo based on the early 20th-century novelist E.M. Forster. It’s all veddy British, about class tensions and repressed emotions and emotions expressed in the most understated way possible. It’s also sublime.

Watch it: Howards End

Ida (2013)

Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski’s black-and-white film deservedly won the Oscar for its highly personal story of a young woman raised in an orphanage in post-WWII Poland who learns of her Jewish heritage – just as she’s preparing to take her vows as a Roman Catholic nun. Soon, our demure heroine joins her more abrasive aunt to visit the village where her parents lived and died, and confront some of the atrocities perpetrated (or tolerated) by her countrymen.

Watch it: Ida

I Am Not Your Negro (2017)

Before his death in 1987, the great writer James Baldwin was working on a personal account describing the lives of three of his friends from the civil rights movement, all of whom were assassinated: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. In his Oscar-nominated doc, Raoul Peck reclaims the project (Baldwin left only 30 pages) and shapes a searing narrative of the racial politics of the 1960s and ‘70s through Baldwin’s perspective.

Watch it: I Am Not Your Negro

The Secret of Kells (2009)

After all those hyper-realistic CG-heavy animated movies of recent years, there’s something refreshing to see the hand-drawn look at Irish mythology from the POV of a young boy in 9th-century Ireland whose uncle works on the illustrated manuscript The Book of Kells. The Oscar-nominated film is a delightful throwback in many ways, offering something fresh for both kids and grownups, in ways that suggest some of the best work of master Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, 84 (Princess Mononoke).

Watch it: The Secret of Kells

The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Noah Baumbach, 55, hit his groove as a filmmaker on this 2005 indie starring Laura Linney, 61, and Jeff Daniels, 70, as an erudite Brooklyn couple whose divorce impacts their two teenage sons (the eldest played by Jesse Eisenberg in his breakout role). Baumbach, who based the story on his own childhood experience, leaves a mark with wry observational style that never lets the emotions simmer over into goopy melodrama.

Watch it: The Squid and the Whale

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Thom Geier is an AARP contributor and the award-winning former executive editor of TheWrap, senior editor at Entertainment Weekly, film reporter at The Hollywood Reporter and associate editor at U.S. News & World Report.