How to Watch Hundreds of Free Movies on YouTube

We lived in the age of movie the­aters, then we lived in the age of home video, and now we live in the age of stream­ing. Like every peri­od in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, ours has its advan­tages and its dis­ad­van­tages. The qua­si-reli­gios­i­ty of the cinephile view­ing expe­ri­ence is, arguably, not as well served by click­ing on a Youtube video as it is by attend­ing a screen­ing at a grand revival house. But on the whole, we do have the advan­tage of access, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er we like, to a great many films that most of us may have been whol­ly unable to see just a cou­ple of decades ago — and often, we can watch them for free.

That said, these are still rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly days for on-demand view­ing, and find­ing out just where to do it isn’t as easy as it could be. That’s why we’ve round­ed up this col­lec­tion of Youtube chan­nels with free movies, which togeth­er con­sti­tute one big meta-col­lec­tion of hun­dreds of films. Among them are numer­ous black-and-white clas­sics, of course, but also crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed pic­tures by inter­na­tion­al auteurs, rather less crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed (but nonethe­less enjoy­able) cult favorites, doc­u­men­taries on a wide vari­ety of sub­jects, and even twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry Hol­ly­wood releas­es.

Which films you can watch will vary, unfor­tu­nate­ly, depend­ing on which part of the world you hap­pen to be watch­ing them in. But no mat­ter your loca­tion, you should eas­i­ly be able to find more than a few worth­while selec­tions on all these chan­nels. One under-appre­ci­at­ed aspect of our stream­ing age is that, though the num­ber of choic­es may some­times over­whelm, it’s nev­er been eas­i­er to give a movie a chance. One click may, after all, trans­port you into a pic­ture that changes the way you expe­ri­ence cin­e­ma itself — and if it does­n’t, well, at least the price was right.

• Cult Cin­e­ma Clas­sics: This chan­nel fea­tures cult clas­sic films from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60, 70s and 80s, pro­vid­ing access to 100 hor­ror films, almost 400 west­ern films, and a large num­ber of Pre-Code films.
• Kino Lor­ber: Kino Lor­ber, a lead­ing film dis­trib­u­tor, has put 145 films on YouTube. The col­lec­tion includes 80 doc­u­men­taries on top­ics like on M.C. Esch­er, Stan­ley Kubrick, Han­nah Arendt, and Hilma af Klint.
• Kore­an Clas­sic Films: This chan­nel lets you expe­ri­ence decades of Kore­an cin­e­ma, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to those of mid-20th-cen­tu­ry mas­ters like Kim Ki-young, Im Kwon-taek, and Kim Soo-yong, direc­tor of haunt­ing, even brazen pic­tures of the 1960s and 70s like Mist and Night Jour­ney. Enter the chan­nel here.
• Mos­film: One of the old­est film stu­dios in Rus­sia & Europe, Mos­film has put online hun­dreds of Russ­ian and Sovi­et films, many with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. The col­lec­tion includes major films by Andrei Tarkovsky and an epic adap­ta­tion of War & Peace. Here, you will also find Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and oth­er films by Sergei Eisen­stein. Enter the chan­nel here.
• Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da: Canada’s pub­lic film pro­duc­er and dis­trib­u­tor has put online a large col­lec­tion of short films. The chan­nel fea­tures over 50 films from cel­e­brat­ed Cana­di­an ani­ma­tor Nor­man McLaren, plus curat­ed col­lec­tions of films from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond.
• New Yorker’s Screen­ing Room: On The New York­er’s YouTube chan­nel, you can find a Screen­ing Room that hosts near­ly 70 award-win­ning short films. This col­lec­tion includes some won­der­ful clay­ma­tions and ani­ma­tions. We pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the col­lec­tion on our site in 2021.
• Piz­zaFlix: A pas­sion project cre­at­ed by two film indus­try pro­fes­sion­als with 50 years com­bined expe­ri­ence. They con­trol a large, pri­vate­ly-held broad­cast-qual­i­ty film & TV library and have put online over 300 cow­boy west­erns, 80+ noir films, 200+ clas­sic thriller and mys­tery films, and a num­ber of films by Roger Cor­man.
• Pop­corn Flix: A lit­tle like Piz­zaFlix (above), this archive has playlists of action movies, sci fi films, west­erns, thrillers, come­dies, dra­mas, and more.
• Time­less Clas­sic Movies: Just as the title says, it’s a fine col­lec­tion of time­less clas­sic movies. Among oth­er things, you can find 35 noir films and 60 clas­sic thrillers here.
• YouTube’s Free Stream­ing Movies: YouTube itself hosts a large num­ber of free stream­ing movies, most­ly main­stream Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tions. That said, you can also find some clas­sics there, like the Coen Broth­er­s’O Broth­er, Where Art Thou?, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Dreams, Yasu­jiro Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry, and Clint East­wood’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and also Fist­ful of Dol­lars. Enter the chan­nel here.

If you know of oth­er YouTube chan­nels that legit­i­mate­ly host films online, please add them to the com­ments sec­tion below.

And, for more films, be sure to explore our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Relat­ed Con­tent 

60 Free Film Noir Movies

Watch 3,000+ Films Free Online from the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch 30+ Excep­tion­al Short Films for Free in The New Yorker’s Online Screen­ing Room

Watch More Than 400 Clas­sic Kore­an Films Free Online Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

Watch 70 Movies in HD from Famed Russ­ian Stu­dio Mos­film: Clas­sic Films, Beloved Come­dies, Tarkovsky, Kuro­sawa & More

Kino Lor­ber Puts Online 50 Free Films: Watch Clas­sics by Jean-Luc Godard, Derek Jar­man, Tai­ka Wait­i­ti & Oth­er Major Film­mak­ers

Cha­rade, the Best Hitch­cock Film Hitch­cock Nev­er Made: Stars Cary Grant & Audrey Hep­burn

Watch Free Cult Films by Stan­ley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi & More on the New Kino Cult Stream­ing Ser­vice

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.