The 14 Best Movies and Shows to Watch on Kanopy — For Free!

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

Thom Geier,

Updated February 03, 2026

AARP

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Published March 17, 2025

/ Updated February 03, 2026

james baldwin posing for a black and white portrait in 1972

American Writer James Baldwin, 27th April 1972

Sophie Bassouls/Getty Images

Kanopy, which launched as a streaming service in Australia in 2010, may be the best streamer you’ve never heard of. The platform has carved out a niche to serve colleges as well as patrons of public libraries who can set up a free account with their library cards (check with your local library to see if it belongs to the Kanopy network). The deep catalog of titles skews heavily toward fare that you don’t typically find on Netflix and other mainstream streaming services: educational kids programming, documentaries, foreign language films and older classics that major streamers like HBO Max and Paramount+ don’t bother to offer even if they own the rights. (The promise of being able to watch any old movie or TV show on demand seems to have disappeared as media conglomerates look to cut costs and streamline offerings.)

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 library about availability; many library systems also limit the number of titles you can stream per month. Thank your library and enjoy these 15 top picks on Kanopy right now.

Camille Claudel (1988, R)

Isabelle Adjani, now 70, 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 Gérard Depardieu, 77, at the height of his swoonworthiness. 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

Dial M for Murder (1954, PG)

If you watch Alfred Hitchcock’s crime thriller carefully, you’ll notice a curious focus on Grace Kelly’s hand reaching for scissors or a key going into a lock. That’s because the film was shot in polarized 3D, which was all the rage in the mid-’50s. Released mostly in 2D since the fad had begun to wane, the film remains one of Hitch’s most suspenseful, taut explorations of adultery, blackmail and murder-for-hire scheming.

Watch it: Dial M for Murder

Force Majeure (2014, R)

Swedish director Ruben Östlund, 51, presents a dark mirror to the human condition in this dark little domestic drama (which inspired a forgettable American remake, Downhill, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 64, and Will Ferrell, 58). Businessman Tomas is on a ski 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 on everyone in his orbit.

Watch it: Force Majeure

Freaks and Geeks (1999)

This one-season NBC dramedy was truly ahead of its time: an unblinking look at 1980s high school social cliques created by Paul Feig, 63 (Bridesmaids) and executive produced by Judd Apatow, 58. 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, 50.

Watch it: Freaks and Geeks

Ghosts (2019-23)

When cash-strapped Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) unexpectedly inherits a dilapidated country mansion from a distant relative, she and her husband (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) decide to renovate the place into a luxury hotel. But there’s a hitch: It’s haunted by dozens of bickering ghosts, from multiple eras in history, and Alison can see all of them after a nasty fall. This hilarious five-season series, which spawned an equally sharp American version, will walk through walls to tickle you.

Watch it: Ghosts

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, 88, and Emma Thompson, 66 (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 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. She joins her abrasive aunt to visit the village where her parents lived and died and confronts 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, 72, 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

Memento (2000, R)

Christopher Nolan, 55, the Oscar-winning director of Oppenheimer and the Dark Knight trilogy, staked his claim on Hollywood with this twisty, indie psychological thriller (only his second feature film). Guy Pearce, 58, stars as a man who suffers a type of amnesia that makes him unable to form new memories and wipes his slate clean every few hours. So he uses tattoos, Polaroids and handwritten notes to piece together his life — including his vengeance plot against the mysterious person who killed his wife and caused his condition. It’s a tour de force thriller that rewards those who watch with undivided attention (or have the rewind button close at hand).

Watch it: Memento

The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (2009)

Kanopy offers many of the elegiacally marvelous documentary series that Ken Burns, 72, produced for PBS, but we singled out this 12-hour, six-part study of a project that is both a political and ecological achievement. Plus, the show morphs into nature-doc territory with its lush cinematography, showcasing the beauty of sites like Yosemite, Yellowstone and, of course, the Grand Canyon.

Watch it: The National Parks

Parasite (2019, R)

This class-conscious parable from Korean director Bong Joon-ho, 56, deservedly became the first foreign-language film to win the Oscar for best picture. We follow a family on the verge of destitution, living in an often-flooded basement apartment and stealing Wi-Fi from a nearby café. But then the son scores a gig tutoring the daughter of a wealthy businessman in a lovely mansion on a hill — and proceeds to engineer jobs for the rest of his family in the same household. The final act is full of surprises, managing to walk the fine line between menacing and uplifting.

Watch it: Parasite

Pride and Prejudice (1995)

Jennifer Ehle, 56, is delightful as the lively Elizabeth Bennet in this six-part adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, but the breakout star is a young Colin Firth, now 65, as a Mr. Darcy who’s alternately an arrogant jerk or a smoldering slice of tea cake, depending on the scene. Firth’s portrayal became so popular that six years later, the actor played a similarly reluctant love interest named Mark Darcy, opposite Renée Zellweger, 56, in Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Watch it: Pride and Prejudice

The Secret of Kells (2009)

After all those hyperrealistic CG-heavy animated movies of recent years, this hand-drawn look at Irish mythology is a visual tonic. The story follows the perspective 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.

Watch it: The Secret of Kells

The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Noah Baumbach, 56, hit his groove as a filmmaker on this mid-aughts 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 childhood experience, leaves a mark with a wry observational style that never lets emotions boil over into 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.