From homegrown heroes to erotic European romances via jet black American comedy, there’s a seemingly never-ending embarrassment of riches on offer in the SBS On Demand vault. Here are some of the most-watched movies from across the year – find them in the Best Movies of 2025 Collection – and why we think you might want to check them out, too.
The New Boy
One of Australia’s greatest filmmakers, Warwick Thornton (Kaytetye), won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature in the 2009 Cannes Film Festival for his astonishing Samson & Delilah. Nominated for Cannes’ Un Certain Regard Award in 2023, The New Boy stars a dazzling Aswan Reid as a member of the Stolen Generation deposited at a convent run by a steely Cate Blanchett’s drunken nun, Sister Eileen, in 1940.
A rebel who resists the church’s patriarchal grip, Sister Eileen nevertheless tries to indoctrinate the boy, dimming the light of his First Nations-bestowed spirituality, connected to the earth, rather than the heavens. Incandescently lit, with writer/director Thornton also on cinematography, the film’s wrangling with colonial violence burns brightly.
The New Boy is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
The New Boy
Drama • 2023
Drama • 2023
Aftersun
Often, the films with the most to say do so whisper-soft. Such is the case with Scottish writer/director Charlotte Wells’ sublimely unmooring debut feature, Aftersun, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes’ Critics Week and the BAFTA Outstanding Debut Award. It stars the internet’s boyfriend, Paul Mescal, as Calum, a single dad struggling to keep his head above water, who has taken his tween daughter Sophie (outstanding newcomer Frankie Corio) on holiday to Turkey.
Over the course of a week or so in the sun, their bond is reforged, stronger than ever, but the shadows of sadness that cloud Calum’s mind are ever-present even as they lounge by the pool. A monumental testament to loves lost and found, Aftersun transforms David Bowie and Freddie Mercury's banger ‘Under Pressure’ into a haunting ode to the eternal.
Aftersun is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Aftersun
Drama • 2022
Drama • 2022
To Die For
Across a sparkling career encapsulating everything from BMX Bandits to Batman Forever via her Oscar-winning performance in The Hours and recent bewigged run in wine mom thrillers like The Perfect Couple, Nicole Kidman is a national treasure. Often, it’s her most outré roles that captivate audiences.
So it is in Gus Van Sant’s dark-as-night mockumentary lashing local TV, adapted by Buck Henry from Joyce Maynard’s novel, as inspired by the real-life murder trial of Pamela Smart. Sant casts Kidman as Suzanne Stone, a weather presenter hanging on a Pulitzer, determined to claw her way to the top. Folks like husband Larry (Matt Dillon) and a mope of local emos (Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck and Alison Folland) are collateral damage. Kidman won a Golden Globe for her fearlessly monstrous turn.
To Die For is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
To Die For
Comedy drama • Thriller • 1995
Comedy drama • Thriller • 1995
Triangle of Sadness
Speaking of skin-laceratingly sharp satire, Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund loves to push buttons with jaw-droppers like Force Majeure, in which a cowardly father abandons his family during an avalanche, and Claes Bang-led The Square, exposing art world gobbledygook.
Nominated for three Oscars and winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Triangle of Sadness is a cruise-set disaster movie starring Harris Dickinson and the late Charlbi Dean as a sniping couple of models trying to grift their way to the top as Instagram influencers. Vacuous as they are, they’re far from the worst on board, with a passenger list that includes weapons dealers, tech bros and Russian oligarchs. Stick around for cinema’s most epic spew sequence (apologies, Team America) and a hierarchy-smashing denouement, once Woody Harrelson’s perma-inebriated captain gives up the ghost.
Triangle of Sadness is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Triangle of Sadness
Dark comedy • 2022
Dark comedy • 2022
The Royal Hotel
Australian filmmaker Kitty Green took on the ghastly ghouls lurking behind Ukraine’s topless feminist movement in bracing documentary Ukraine Is Not a Brothel, and the big beasts that prompted the #MeToo uprising in US-set dramatic feature The Assistant.
She turns her unsparing eye towards toxic masculinity at home in this Australian horror. Loosely inspired by Pete Gleeson’s remarkable documentary Hotel Coolgardie, it’s led by The Assistant star Julia Garner and Glass Onion’s Jessica Henwick as broke backpackers who wind up working the bar in an outback pub run by Hugo Weaving’s crusty publican. From the days of 1971’s Wake in Fright, such locales have never boded well for tourists on the big screen. Chuck in the presence of Romper Stomper sequel show star Toby Wallace, Animal Kingdom’s James Frecheville and Snowtown’s Daniel Henshall, and we’re calling time to run.
The Royal Hotel is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
The Royal Hotel
Thriller • 2023
Thriller • 2023
The Lost Boys
When Bram Stoker harnessed ancient vampiric myths, transforming them into his still-best-selling epistolary novel Dracula, he carved an undying template in bloody bone that would inspire countless creative minds, reanimating these scary stories in their own not-seen-in-a-mirror image.
They include Joel Schumacher, who, almost a decade before taking Kidman to Gotham City, created one of the most fang-tastic films of all time, setting the knowing tone for films like Scream to come while casting ‘80s dynamos the Coreys. Corey Haim plays sweet Sam, terrified when his beloved big bro Michael (Jason Patric) is turned by punk rock Nosferatu in leather jackets stalking the Californian coast, as led by Kiefer Sutherland’s David. Sam turns to comic book shop-running Frog brothers – Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander – for their lore, hoping to save Michael and their mum, as played by the legendary Dianne Wiest. Cue endlessly quotable dialogue.
The Lost Boys is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
The Lost Boys
Horror • Comedy • 1987
Horror • Comedy • 1987
Vera and the Pleasure of Others
Argentinian directorial duo Romina Tamburello and Federico Actis’ debut feature is an unapologetically sex-positive comedy with shades of What it Feels Like for a Girl.
Luciana Grasso stars as the 17-year-old student of the title who steals the keys to one of her mother’s (Inés Estevez) loosely maintained clutch of investment apartments. But Vera’s not out to cream profit from long-term tenants; instead, renting the space out to curious teenagers who want to experience their first time together. In listening to these fleeting erotic stories from behind a closed door, Vera’s personal sexual awakening begins to blossom in this deftly unjudgmental affair.
Vera and the Pleasure of Others is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Vera and the Pleasure of Others
Comedy • Drama • 2023
Comedy • Drama • 2023
99 Moons
While on the subject of eroticism, Swiss director Jan Gassmann’s 99 Moons is, once again, the undisputed champion of 2025, racking up the most SBS On Demand movie streams across the year. It stars first-timers Valentina Di Pace and Dominik Fellmann as 30-something Bigna and Frank, a tsunami research scientist and an aimless party boy who decide to hook up. She takes control, calling the fantasy shots, but he’s taken aback. Can they find mutual rhythm as the years pass by in a blur, with a dash of the Before Sunrise trilogy?
99 Moons is streaming at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
99 Moons
Drama • 2022
Drama • 2022
Did your favourite make the list? Find out in the BEST MOVIES OF 2025 COLLECTION at SBS on Demand. You can also discover the year's most popular films and TV series and some hidden gems in the BEST OF 2025 HUB.
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