Hey everyone!

Last month Hideo Kojima was talking about his new favourite Sci-fi animation, and I got mega surprised to know it was 🇫🇷 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 😅

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, I’ve 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!

I’ll 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! 💪

  • velorutionnaire@jlai.luEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    Thank you for you very good work !

    I see you did not find a European database of movies and shows. Did you know and ask senscritique.com ? It is a french website for a database of movies/series/books/games/music/… It is fed by the community and they can have some additional information. For example, I am watching the Swedish/Danish series Broen right now on Arte (a German-French TV channel) and it does not appear on watchfrom.eu but it does on senscritique.com.

    Their database is very likely more oriented to a french context but maybe you can do something with it. They talked about an API years ago (on this question of the FAQ) but I see no information so I doubt it has been done. But you can still ask, you never know.

    • skepller@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Hey man!

      You said that it “does not appear on WFEU”, but the link you added takes me directly to it! It also appears when I search for it. Was that a typo? Or did it not appear to you at first (could be a bug)?

      I didn’t see senscritique initially, but it does seem focused on the French context, but who knows, I’ll look further into them. Thanks!

      • velorutionnaire@jlai.luEnglish
        1·
        22 hours ago

        Ah sorry, it was unclear. I meant Arte and the other french platforms do not appear on the watchfrom.eu page whereas they appear on senscritique (being french and completed by french users). So it could be a lead to complete the “Where to watch” information you already have.

        Edit: actually I did not pay attention to the country filter on the “Where to watch” part before ^^ And I see you get it from justwatch.com. I’ll go take a look there to see how it works.

        Edit 2: ah but so does senscritique actually ; and Arte appears on JustWatch so I do not know what the difference is 🤔

        • skepller@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          15 hours ago

          I got very confused at first, but holy shit! What a legend!

          You just spotted a significant bug with the streaming services code which can randomly cause services to disappear! Will fix it soon, huge thanks! It’s always good to have an extra pair of eyes on stuff!