A Matter of Life and Death – Free – Romantic fantasy film created by the British writing-directing-producing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and set in England during the Second World War.A Hunting Accident – Free – Soviet romantic drama directed by Emil Loteanu, adapted from Anton Chekhov’s “The Shooting Party.” It was entered into the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.A Farewell to Arms – Free – Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes star in a film based on famous novel by Ernest Hemingway.3,000 Free Films from the National Film Board of Canada – Free – The National Film Board of Canada has put online thousands of films across all genres of film.Many films are unfortunately geo-restricted to certain geographies. 300+ Free Movies Streaming on YouTube – Free – YouTube officially provides a large number of Hollywood movies that you can watch free with ads.These all appear on Mosfilm’s official YouTube channel. 70 Movies in HD from Famed Russian Studio Mosfilm – Free – Includes films by Tarkovsky, Eisenstein and Kurosawa.125 Korean Feature Films – Free – The Korean Film Archive has put on YouTube over 100 Korean feature films, including Im Kwon-taek’s Sopyonje and Hong Sangsoo’s The Day the Pig Fell Into a Well.Now, we're coming back for more ads to stream our favorite shows for less. We escaped television programs to streaming platforms to avoid the ad breaks. While it's nice to get some content for free for a change, it does feel a bit like we've come full circle. This ad-supported model will likely stick around for a while as YouTube gives it a trial run.

Whether YouTube plans to one day become a subscription service the likes of Netflix is difficult to say, but it's very unlikely. On the other hand, YouTube's competitors are also branching out, seeing as TikTok has recently extended the maximum video length to a whopping 10 minutes. It requires being able to appeal to different demographics and provide all kinds of content as opposed to focusing on just one type of creativity.

With Netflix, Peacock, and other such platforms on one end, and Instagram, TikTok, and similar social media apps on the other, YouTube is trying to fit in with the crowd on both sides, which is no easy feat.

Right now, it's hard not to feel that YouTube may be split in half.

List of free youtube movies