Video streaming services cover the gamut of entertainment. Some are great for watching the latest and greatest original series. Others provide top-notch sports coverage. Filmatique’s specialty is indie and international films. The service curates series of under-the-radar films alongside relevant editorial content; cinephiles should find much to enjoy in that respect. However, the service lacks apps on some popular platforms, does not include subtitle customization options, and is missing some of the social features that make competitors feel more welcoming. Film enthusiasts may forgive those shortcomings (especially at the price), but Filmatique lags behind the competition both in terms of the library size and technical features.
What Can I Watch on Filmatique?
According to its About page, “Filmatique remains committed to the power of cinema as a tool to foster diversity, understanding and empathy across societies and borders.” Many other film streaming services have a similar guiding principle. On Apple TV (where its app is known as FLMTQ), Filmatique further specifies that, “rather than fixating on old masters, Filmatique streams the best festival films from around the world so that audiences can discover exciting new directors from around the world.”
The Criterion Channel is foremost concerned about preserving great works. Mubi is more similar to Filmatique in that it focuses, in part, on spotlighting lesser-known titles. KweliTV emphasizes films from Africa and beyond and is one of several video streaming services that celebrate Black art. Both The Criterion Channel (2,000 titles) and Mubi (800 films) have much larger libraries than Filmatique, and both also offer some slightly more mainstream titles.
Ovid.tv and CuriosityStream are other services that film fans should check out. The former is also dedicated to indie films, but it has a faster-growing library than Filmatique. The latter is a documentary-focused streaming service that covers tons of topics including history, nature, science, society, and technology.
Filmatique organizes its library into different series, such as American Indie III, Filmatique Talents II, Reygadas x Larraín, Spotlight on Brazil II, Queer Cinema, The Future is Female (Directors), and Visions from the South of The World. At the time of testing, we counted 13 different categories in the Current Series section, each with around five entries. Each month, Filmatique debuts a new Series. It appears that each Series remain active for a year, after which it moves to the Archives. When titles rotate out of Mubi’s Now Showing section, many simply move to the Library section and are still available for streaming. You cannot watch films in archived series on Filmatique with your subscription, but, as we explain below, you can now rent them.
To give you an idea of the types of films you can expect, the films in the American Indie III series include Tormenting The Hen, Mom, New Jerusalem, and Pavilion. The Foreign Language Oscar Submissions III category features When I Saw You, Court, Tuplan, and Horses of God. The Future is Female (Directors) series groups Home directed by Ursula Meier, Songs My Brother Taught Me directed by Chloé Zhao (currently helming Marvel’s The Eternals), It Felt Like Love directed by Eliza Hittman, Red Road directed by Andrea Arnold, and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night directed by Ana Lily Amirpour. A series called Visions from the South of the World, includes Hermia & Helena, Inexba (The Wound), The Pearl Button, and Liverpool.
Filmatique is not the only place to watch some of these titles. For example, Prime Video has three entries from the English-language section. Hermia & Helena is available to watch on Mubi. You can catch A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night on horror-streaming service Shudder. You don’t need to sign up for an account to view all of the current films available to stream on Filmatique, so you can check if other platforms have the title you want to watch before subscribing.
Filmatique recently added the ability to rent films from its archived series. Not all of the archived films are currently available to rent, but Filmatique says that it is working to include all of them. A representative clarified that every film that exits the platform will immediately be made available as a rental. At the time of writing, the films from the Ecologies, French Art House I, The Creation of Meaning, The Future is Female (Directors), and Visions from the South of the World series are available.
Rental titles cost $4.99 and are yours to watch for up to 48 hours. Filmatique offers some films to rent that you can’t find elsewhere, but both A Woman’s Life and Songs My Brother Taught Me are available to rent on Prime Video. That service offers HD rentals of those titles for $4.99, but you can also rent them in SD quality for $3.99 or purchase them outright in HD ($12.99) or SD ($9.99) quality. Keep in mind that you don’t actually ownown digital movies you purchase from sites such as Prime Video.
Rental titles cannot currently be downloaded for offline viewing, but a representative said this is a planned feature for the service’s iOS apps. These film rentals are available in 1080p.
How Much Does Filmatique Cost?
Filmatique costs $4.95 per month, which makes it one of the cheapest video streaming services we’ve reviewed to date. Filmatique’s annual discounted annual plan is only $49.95 per year. New users can sign up for a 30-day trial of the service. As with Mubi, you can gift a discounted subscription to Filmatique to any of your cinephile friends.
CuriosityStream undercuts Filmatique’s price at a starting price of only $2.99 per month, but other movie and film streaming services are pricier. Mubi and The Criterion Channel, for example, both cost $10.99 per month. KweliTV ($5.99 per month) and Ovid.tv ($6.99 per month) are more comparable. Most mainstream video streaming services cost more than Filmatique. Disney+ is $6.99 per month, Prime Video is $8.99 per month, and Netflix’s Standard plan (the lowest tier we recommend) is $13.99 per month. HBO Max is much pricier at $14.99 per month.
If you don’t want to pay to watch shows and movies on-demand, check out our roundup of the best free video streaming services. Of the entries in that roundup, Peacock has the most accessible library, though others, such as Crackle and Tubi, also sometimes have worthwhile entries.
Apart from its web interface, Filmatique is only available on Apple TV, iOS, and Roku devices. The service does not offer apps for Android, Chromecast, or Fire TV devices, let alone for game consoles. A representative from Filmatique confirmed that Android and Fire TV apps are planned. The vast majority of services we’ve reviewed offer far better platform support.
Filmatique on the Web
Filmatique’s web interface design is decidedly more journal-like than most competitors, with a sparse monochromatic design and understated menu items that use a serif font style. The site is quick to navigate, but the menu system seems a bit broken; often when we navigated to a new section of the site, the menu’s Sign In button indicated that we were not logged in on our test account.
You navigate the experience via a few items in a top menu: Watch, Series, Journal, and Dashboard. The dashboard section is where you can change your profile information, password, and manage your subscription. There are no additional settings here related to actually using Filmatique.
The Watch section of the Filmatique lists its many curated Series of films down the page. Click on the category name to go to an editorial page that contextualizes all the films in the Series or hit the arrows to scroll through all the entries in the list. Click a film’s thumbnail to go directly to its detail page.
A film’s detail page showcases the film at the top, with any related video features directly below it. The Criterion Channel organizes all of its extra video content similarly. A short film summary and background information fill out the rest of the page, along with a list of related films at the bottom. You won’t find user reviews or the detailed cast information that you get with Mubi. Shudder allows subscribers to write reviews, too. Filmatique plans to introduce film discussions on its social media pages, rather than on these entry pages.
The Series section breaks down into two parts: Current and Archives. All the same Series of films that appear on the Watch section, appear in the Current section. The Archives house all of the old Series. You can’t watch the films in these sections, but you can read about them and watch any associated trailers. If you value Filmatique for its curation, these archived categories may still be useful.
Filmatique’s Journal section is similar to Mubi’s Notebook. Here, you can find interviews, essays, film festival coverage, and previews of film exhibitions in New York. Films in the Spotlight section appear alongside an extensive set of related interviews, write-ups, and essays. Cinephiles will certainly enjoy this selection of editorial content.
Filmatique on Mobile
We tested Filmatique’s mobile app on an iPhone 11 running iOS 13. The app maintains the web interface’s sparse monochromatic look. The main Catalog section highlights Filmatique’s various Series. Large thumbnails put the focus on the films where it belongs, but they are so large that you can only see about three films at a time before needing to scroll. The Categories section provides a denser list of genres to choose from, at the expense of film thumbnails.
Filmatique’s mobile app is slick to navigate. For instance, pressing the hamburger menu in the top-left corner seamlessly slides in a new pane for accessing the home menu, the list of categories, films you’ve favorited, your offline downloads, and your subscription settings. Selecting a film morphs the interface around the film itself as the description pops in. These are subtle, but appealing visual effects.
On each film’s details page, you can favorite it, download it, and in some instances watch the trailer or other bonus features. There are no options for adjusting the streaming quality on the mobile app.
Playback Experience
Filmatique’s playback interface on the web is basic, but functional. Aside from standard playback and volume buttons, you can also select the playback resolution and speed. We would prefer to see dedicated rewind and fast-forward buttons here.
The mobile player does let you skip forward and back 15 seconds. One annoying design quirk is that you have to scroll to the bottom of the page and press the relatively tiny play button to start a film. Tapping the big, eye-catching image up top would feel much more natural.
Filmatique supports playback resolutions of up to 1080p, but many of the entries top out at lower resolutions than that. For example, some films are unavailable to stream in 720p, while others only go up to 540p. While true that the available streaming resolution depends on the source, the titles on Mubi and The Criterion Channel are more consistent in their support for higher resolution streaming. Other top services for watching movies include 4K content, too, among them Apple TV+, Disney+, Prime Video, and Netflix. A representative from Filmatique noted that the service checks to make sure each film is viewable.
We were able to stream content from Filmatique on two devices simultaneously in testing, though the limit on simultaneous streams may be higher than that. We have submitted a question to our Filmatique contact and will update this information with a response.
We tried watching August at Akiko’s in 1080p over an Ethernet connection (200 Mbps) and encountered no playback issues or buffering. The film’s audio sounded fine, too.
Accessibility and Parental Controls
Filmatique only includes baked-in subtitle options with its foreign-language films, which is problematic. We’d like Filmatique to add customizable subtitles for every film. A representative noted that the service plans to have subtitles on all titles by the middle of 2021.
Nearly every other video streaming service we’ve reviewed offers a toggle for enabling subtitles for every show or movie, although the extent of customization options varies widely between services. Prime Video and Netflix take accessibility options even further with support for Audio Descriptions. This feature, when enabled, adds an audible narration track that describes scene changes and character movements that are not discernible from dialogue alone.
You don’t get any parental control options with Filmatique, but then this feature is rare among dedicated film streaming services and not entirely relevant. Mubi and The Criterion Channel also do not offer any parental control tools. Still, we can imagine parents of budding filmmakers wanting the ability to add specific films to an allow list to prevent their kid from watching anything too inappropriate. A representative from Filmatique noted that the service provides “specific warnings for films with a more sensitive subject matter.”
Filmatique and VPN
A VPN is a vital tool for protecting your privacy online. You can also use your VPN to spoof your location online, which is one of the reasons for potential conflicts with video streaming services; sometimes streaming rights are restricted to certain locations. In Filmatique’s case, the streaming library is only available for residents of the US and Canada. Mubi is available in tons of international markets, by comparison.
We tried streaming a film on Filmatique from a desktop PC connected to a US-based Mullvad VPN server, but couldn’t even sign in to our test account. Instead, Filmatique redirected us to an international landing page.
Films For Thought
Filmatique is an inexpensive film streaming service suited best for true cinephiles. The presentation of curated film Series alongside worthwhile editorial and video content should appeal to those who want to get as far away from big-budget Hollywood releases as possible. Filmatique doesn’t nail every aspect of the experience, however. For example, its film library (although curated), is not nearly as large as that of similar services Mubi and The Criterion Channel. While an argument could be made that more tightly focused curation is actually better, the service has other, more unequivocal drawbacks—such as a lack of subtitle customization options and inconsistent support for 1080p streams. Furthermore, it’s not available on some major platforms.
Netflix remains our top pick for on-demand video streaming services because of its excellent original series and movies. Peacock earns an Editors’ Choice award among free service because of its mainstream library and sophisticated apps.
