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Apple TV App of the Year

MUBI: Stream Great Cinema

Hand-picked by our curators

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MUBI helped us discover amazing experimental films, indie gems and international documentaries – all expertly curated with a human touch.

– App Store editors

The curators of indie streaming app MUBI did something pretty radical this year. Instead of asking us to scroll through endless tiles of blockbusters and sensational reality series, they simply suggested what they felt was the best.

That “just trust us” approach was game-changing. We discovered delightfully disquieting romantic thrillers and father-daughter tales that shook us to the core. And although it’s been weeks since we watched it, we’re still thinking about the stars of that uplifting documentary about seven stray cats who roam the streets of Istanbul.

Even each movie’s landing page gets a personal touch. Check out the Our Take write-ups for insights from MUBI’s team of expert curators.

The driving force behind that sense of discovery? Human curators. “The films we pick have made us feel something – and we pick them because we want someone else to feel that too,” says founder and CEO Efe Cakarel. “It’s our soul. It’s why we exist.”

It’s that soul that makes MUBI so much fun to browse. We enjoyed getting lost in cleverly curated collections such as “Golden Palms, Lions, and Bears, Oh My!” and “Pride Unprejudiced.” We gladly explored director retrospectives and cult films that “embrace infamy”.

And MUBI’s steady stream of new releases kept us coming back. Ira Sachs’ steamy romance Passages and Sebastián Silva’s meta satire Rotting in the Sun both hit the service soon after leaving cinemas. Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla is on the way to the service soon.*

In a time when trustworthy recommendations can be hard to come by, MUBI opened up a rabbit hole we were happy to jump into.

*Titles may not be available in all regions.

Quick tip

Not sure how to dive in? “Choose something you ideally can’t even pronounce,” Cakarel suggests. Films are currently localised for more than a dozen countries.

Fun fact

The MUBI Top 1000 is a collection of films that have been highly rated by the app’s very discerning community of cinephiles; you can stream about 75 on the service. MUBI updates the list weekly.

Meet the creator

Efe Cakarel founded MUBI in 2007 “to champion great cinema”. He has made one film: Limon. “It was terrible,” he says. “It taught me a very important life lesson: find out what it is that you don’t do well – and don’t do that thing. That allowed me to focus on what I know how to do.”