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Image Credits:Frank Capra, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons / Wikimedia Commons (opens successful a caller window)1:58 PM PST · December 16, 2025
It’s bully to retrieve that not everything connected the net needs to beryllium a subscription-based level with ads. On WikiFlix, a Netflix-inspired archive of nationalist domain films, you tin ticker movies similar “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Nosferatu” for free. You don’t adjacent person to marque an account! Crazy, right?
A task of Wikipedia’s unpaid community, WikiFlix hosts implicit 4,000 movies from Wikimedia Commons, the Internet Archive, oregon YouTube that person fallen into the nationalist domain — that means they are escaped to stock and distribute, usually due to the fact that the copyright lapsed, oregon determination was ne'er immoderate copyright astatine all. So, yes, astir of the movies connected the WikiFlix homepage are your grandma’s age, but isn’t it benignant of amusive to ideate what Netflix would’ve been similar backmost successful the day?
WikiFlix isn’t new, but it’s caller to us, courtesy of a TikTok by Annie Rauwerda, the creator down the “Depths of Wikipedia” accounts.
While WikiFlix tin present you to historical films similar “Wings,” the archetypal movie to triumph the Academy Award for Best Picture, there’s besides a clump of hidden gems connected there. As Rauwerda says successful her TikTok, “Sometimes I truly similar watching things that I cognize cipher other is watching, due to the fact that what if I observe thing crazy?”
On its homepage, WikiFlix prioritizes movies that person a batch of sitelinks connected their Wikipedia pages, since those are much apt to beryllium fashionable oregon interesting. But determination is immoderate grade of curation. The assemblage astir WikiFlix maintains a blacklist, which helps guarantee that you’re not going to tally into a humanities Nazi propaganda movie during your adjacent “WikiFlix and chill” night. (“While these [films] are perfectly good successful an acquisition context, WikiFlix is much focused connected entertainment,” a WikiFlix page says.)
WikiFlix contented whitethorn not precisely beryllium arsenic binge-worthy arsenic “Stranger Things,” but springiness it a try. Why not ticker a Soviet musical inspired by Cinderella, a silent film astir swashbuckling pirates, oregon a Japanese post-apocalyptic film that features a guy who someway played for some the Boston Celtics and the Chicago Cubs? You tin ever drawback up connected “Love Is Blind” different time.
Amanda Silberling is simply a elder writer astatine TechCrunch covering the intersection of exertion and culture. She has besides written for publications similar Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast astir net culture, with subject fabrication writer Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked arsenic a grassroots organizer, depository educator, and movie festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. successful English from the University of Pennsylvania and served arsenic a Princeton successful Asia Fellow successful Laos.
You tin interaction oregon verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted connection astatine @amanda.100 connected Signal.
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