I’ll be the first to admit that I had little faith in Mubi’s ascendancy until quite recently. When it launched in 2009, it seemed like a sweet little idea—a streaming service for arthouse movie geeks! —that was doomed to obscurity. I thought it would be one for people in their 20s who think they’re more into film than they actually are and would inevitably cancel their membership when they realize they’re more excited about the new Reacher season that’s about to arrive on Amazon Prime Video. And then, as the years have worn on, the little streamer that could has continued to prove its might, largely through good taste. Around 2016, Mubi began acquiring distribution rights for films like Luca Guadagnino’s balletic horror Suspiria and last year’s similarly unsettling body horror The Substance, which very nearly won Demi Moore her first Oscar. Slowly but surely, its clout grew.
Fast-forward to 2025, and Mubi is going toe-to-toe with major powerhouses of indie cinema. Alongside the buzzier likes of A24 and Neon (which picked up its sixth consecutive Palme d’Or for It Was Just an Accident), the little streamer that could was ever-present at the festival, and left on a high that not even mediocre reviews for the Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor-led romance The History of Sound could quash. Not only did it arrive with UK distribution rights for Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier’s ridiculously acclaimed family drama that got the second-longest standing ovation in Cannes history (19! Minutes!), they left with some of the fest’s best-reviewed films, including Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love, both of the joint-winners of the Jury Prize in The Sound of Falling and Sirat, as well as select international rights to It Was Just an Accident. On top of this, the first movie that Mubi has fully produced and financed on its own—The Mastermind, a Kelly Reichardt heist movie starring Josh O’Connor and Alana Haim— went down very well with critics.
I was in Cannes for a couple of days during week one, and got to see Die My Love and The Sound of Falling in rapt screening rooms. The former is a beautifully shot descent into post-partum psychosis anchored by an incredible Jennifer Lawrence performance. Alongside her, Robert Pattinson is also great as a gormless but loving husband who has no idea how to deal with her illness. It’s got a disconcerting amount of similarities to Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! in which Lawrence also starred, though Die My Love is far more restrained. Like all great Cannes films, though, it wasn’t universally beloved: as I walked out of the screening having thoroughly enjoyed myself, I heard an audience member call it “unbearable”. Movies!
On the other hand, The Sound of Falling—Mascha Schilling’s slow-burn about four girls from different time periods living in the same German farmhouse—left me extremely bored, though I can see why people with a little more artsy taste than I—like the much more cine-literate Cannes jury, which consisted of the great Jeremy Strong, Juliette Binoche and Halle Berry—loved it. It has an impressionistic beauty to it, that’s for sure.
Considering how flat some of the most-anticipated films of the festival fell—including A24’s way-too-soon Covid movie Eddington, which I can tell you firsthand is a slog—Mubi’s performance at Cannes feels genuinely impressive. And as a result, Mubi is going to be the place to watch a large handful of the best movies due out in the next twelve months. So, while it pains us to say this, it is indeed time to subscribe to another streaming service. Sorry!
This story originally appeared in British GQ.
