Watch Selected Cannes Films for Free (For A Limited Time Only)

We’ve already writ­ten about the excel­lent film blog MUBIdai­ly, which is pub­lished by the online screen­ing room Mubi.com. We’ve nev­er real­ly pushed Mubi itself, even though the site fea­tures a wide selec­tion of inde­pen­dent and for­eign films. It’s a sub­scrip­tion site, and we pre­fer to focus on cul­tur­al offer­ings that you can access free of charge.

Still, for the next month, you can watch cer­tain films on Mubi free of charge — specif­i­cal­ly, selec­tions from mul­ti­ple years of Cannes’ La Semaine de la Cri­tique (Crit­ics’ Week), one of the fes­ti­val’s most con­sis­tent­ly inter­est­ing side­bars. Each year a pan­el of inter­na­tion­al crit­ics selects a cur­rent crop of shorts and fea­tures from first and sec­ond time direc­tors, and now MUBI has made a num­ber of past selec­tions freely avail­able online. The selec­tion is a lit­tle uneven, but still often inspir­ing. Of the choic­es offered at Mubi’s mini-ret­ro­spec­tive, we rec­om­mend the Japan­ese film Chick­en Heart, the clever Swedish short Seeds of the Fall, and espe­cial­ly Round Da Way  (Las­cars), a live­ly French ani­mat­ed fea­ture about life in the projects. You can watch Round Da Way above.

The full selec­tion is avail­able for free on Mubi until June 30th, with a caveat or two: Each film is only free for its first 1,000 view­ings, you do need to reg­is­ter to watch, and there may be some geo­re­stric­tion at work (though we can’t say for sure since we’re based in the US).

And final­ly, of course, don’t miss our big curat­ed col­lec­tion of 380 Free Movies, which includes a few major films from Cannes too.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.