With the SBS on Demand vault bulging at the seams with more than 1100 movies to stream, totally free, these vast riches can lead to too-much-choice paralysation.
Where to begin?
Well, if you believe in strength in numbers, one way to tackle it is to go with the most-viewed. Pulling together the most-streamed films from across the year, the is a magnificent sampling of the best of international cinema. Here are some highlights.
99 Moons (99 Ay)
One of the most-watched movies in the entire SBS on Demand collection, Swiss director Jan Gassmann’s sensuous adventure holds up a fly-on-the-wall, verité-style camera to two very different lovers. Valentina Di Pace’s Bigna, a marine scientist specialising in studying tsunamis, is a free spirit who isn’t looking to get tied down. Instead, she has kinky sessions with one-and-done guys. Dominik Fellmann’s DJ party boy Frank, on the other hand, dreams of settling down and becoming a daddy, wanting something more from their steamy, full-frontal hook-ups. Given time, will the gulf between them narrow or widen?
99 Moons is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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99 Moons
drama • 2022
drama • 2022
Death Proof
Since the one-two punch of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino has been dredging body parts from the funkiest corners of cinema and stapling them together, forging brand-new monsters. Originally paired with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror as the Grindhouse double-bill, Death Proof embraces the fusion of sexploitation film and slasher. Kurt Russell – who made a name for himself in genre movies such as Escape from New York and the beloved remake of The Thing – stars as a former stuntman-turned-serial killer who builds Mad Max-like chop shop cars to hunt down beautiful women played by the likes of Rose McGowan, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms and real-life stuntwoman Zoë Bell. But pick the wrong victim and you might just wind up in hell.
Death Proof is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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Death Proof
action • horror • 2007
action • horror • 2007
The Handmaiden (Ah-ga-ssi)
While head of the jury at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, Tarantino pushed for South Korean superstar director Park Chan-wook’s deeply twisted revenge thriller Oldboy to win the Palme d’Or. In the end, his fellow jurors gave it to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. It was the first of four near misses, including 2016’s lusciously drawn The Handmaiden. A stunning reworking of Sarah Waters’ lesbian crime thriller novel Fingersmith, this film transposes the action from Victorian London to Korea under the colonial Japanese boot in the 1930s. Ha Jung-woo is devilishly good as a con artist out to seduce then fleece Kim Min-hee’s rich heiress. But the ‘handmaiden’ he employs to assist him, Kim Tae-ri’s Sook-hee, soon has other ideas.
The Handmaiden is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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The Handmaiden
drama • romance • 2016
drama • romance • 2016
The Drover’s Wife
Multihyphenate creative force Leah Purcell, a Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman, marked her directorial feature debut with this retooled version of the Henry Lawson short story her mum used to read to her as a kid. First adapting it as a stage play in 2016, she based the mother awaiting her husband’s return on her great-grandmother Nancy, a stockwoman. Purcell transformed that work into a novel and then this film, in which she also stars alongside Rob Collins as Yadaka, the wanted First Nations man whose unexpected arrival at her outback hut upends her tenuous peace and sets in motion a devastating story.
The Drover’s Wife is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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The Drover's Wife
drama • 2021
drama • 2021
Queen of Hearts (Dronningen)
Danish-Egyptian filmmaker May el-Toukhy poses a thorny provocation in her Sundance Film Festival Audience Award-winner. She casts star Trine Dyrholm, pioneering actor of the country’s Dogme 95 filmmaking movement, as Anne, a lawyer representing women survivors of sexual assault. She’s raising twin daughters with physician husband Peter (Magnus Krepper from ). But when his teenage son from a previous marriage comes to stay, the young man awakens an erotic fire in her that’s hard to resist. Can the family survive this forbidden passion?
Queen of Hearts is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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Queen of Hearts
drama • 2019
drama • 2019
Boiling Point
If you can’t get enough of the stressful kitchen scenarios spun out of the Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri-led TV show The Bear, then turn on the gas and watch hot water bubble up with this just-as-jittery hit from Chernobyl actor-turned-filmmaker Philip Barantini. Expanding on his short of the same name (it’s since been turned into a TV show, too), it casts This is England actor Stephen Graham and his believably careworn face as a head chef in meltdown alongside Vinette Robinson’s ready-to-jump sous chef during a particularly tumultuous Christmas lunch service in a fancy London restaurant. Shot in one sweat-inducing take, it’ll have your nerves bleeding like a rare steak.
Boiling Point is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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Boiling Point
drama • thriller • 2021
drama • thriller • 2021
The Book of Delights (O Livro dos Prazeres)
Ukrainian-born author Chaya ‘Clarice’ Lispector’s Jewish family fled the violence that followed the dissolution of the Russian Empire after the Great War, ending up in Brazil before she turned two. A remarkable writer, her novel An Apprenticeship, or The Book of Pleasures is adapted by director Marcela Lordy, alongside co-writer Josefina Trotta, into this languorous romance in which Simone Spoladore’s existentially unmoored teacher Lori finds comfort in the arms of Javier Drolas’ philosophy professor, Ulisses. Despite her best intentions to focus on herself, Lori embarks on an erotic voyage of discovery that hints at mythological underpinnings.
The Book of Delights is streaming at SBS On Demand.
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The Book of Delights
drama • romance • 2020
drama • romance • 2020
Everyone Else (Alle Anderen)
German filmmaker Maren Ade captured attentions worldwide with her Oscar and Palme d’Or-nominated fifth feature, Toni Erdman (2016), a bittersweet comedy about a practical joker dad attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughter. There’s plenty of that film’s supremely awkward energy in Ade’s Sardinian-set previous feature, about a new-ish couple – Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger’s Gitti and Chris – just figuring out they might not have as much in common as they thought. The teeny chinks in their collective armour become gaping fissures when Hans-Jochen Wagner and Nicole Marischka’s super-couple, Hans and Sana, arrive. Excruciatingly great, you won’t be able to tear your eyes away!
Everyone Else is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Everyone Else
drama • romance • 2009
drama • romance • 2009
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Did your favourites make the list? Find out in the COLLECTION at SBS on Demand. You can also discover the year's most popular TV series and documentaries and some hidden gems in the .
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