Hey everyone!
Last month Hideo Kojima was talking about his new favourite Sci-fi animation, and I got mega surprised to know it was ๐ซ๐ท French! Not only it is awesome (if you like Cyberpunk and Sci-fi), but it premiered in Europe from 2023! Somehow I completely missed it! :(
I've been adhering to the "movement" for a while, but not too much on media. After this I decided to watch/support more European media, but I very quickly realized that it's fairly hard to find what even is European ๐
Almost all I could find was static "Top X European Movies" lists. So I decided to built something better myself, which resulted in WatchFrom.EU!
It's a discovery website specifically for European cinema and TV.
Europeans are more than capable of producing awesome media, but we don't seem to consume much of our own! (Watch stuff in other languages!)
While building the site, I actually found out that several English-language blockbusters I always thought were Hollywood were actually European produced! Movies like The Fifth Element (which I love), Lucy, and Resident Evil are some examples! (If you're curious, Iโve started listing some of these in the "Curated Lists" section of the site)
Badge system:
Every movie or TV show on the platform is assigned a specific badge so you can quickly visualize where it's from (or its "Europeaness" lol).
The media is categorized them into tiers so you can choose exactly how "European" you want your viewing experience to be. (This is done algorithmically, so I manually adjust/complete data all the time, let me know if something is wrong!)
Tech Stack:
In the same spirit, the infrastructure is built using as much European tech as possible too!
The servers are hosted in Germany by the French OVH and the code is stored in the German Codeberg!
Privacy:
I also happen to be delving more and more into the privacy-focused group lately, so the platform collects absolutely zero data. There are no ads, no third party cookies, and no accounts required. I intend to keep it that way as long as the infrastructure costs and my pocket allows it.
Not finished:
I'm not done, it's still early stages, so bear with me!
I'm making it public now because I'll be leaving on holiday soon, and it's already in a launchable/usable state now, but I still have several features in mind to be added down the line!
Iโll be working on tracking European streaming platforms, better sorting, related media, mailing list with new releases, other UI languages, random recommendations and etc.
There's also missing data, algorithm quirks on badge attribution and minor bugs left to squash, but it should be only up from here!
Hopefully WatchFrom.EU helps you guys find something new to watch tonight! ๐ช
Yeah, I saw this too, but there was no easy way to fix it with the data I have.
I do intend to try to solve it. In the future I'd like to add an "American/Foreign owned" warning / badge, but I need to investigate where to "mass find" this data, or perhaps manually insert it / community input.