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Unified discovery
One page per film or series showing cinema showtimes and legal streaming, rental or purchase options for the visitor’s country.
Research & project
Making European film easier to find, in cinemas and online
Cinevia is an independent research and development project. It explores how licensed open data can help audiences discover where a film is showing in cinemas and where it can be watched legally online, with a particular attention to European works.
This page describes the objectives, the data architecture and the honest status of the work. It does not describe partners or funding, because there are none at this stage.
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Context
Why this project
Information about films is scattered: cinema programmes live on venue and chain websites, streaming catalogues change by country and by month, and European productions are often harder to find than large international releases.
Cinevia tests a simple idea: bring together cinema showtimes and legal streaming availability around a single film page, using only identified and licensed data sources, and say clearly when information is missing.
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What we are trying to do
Objectives
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Visibility of European works
Make European productions easy to browse and filter, without hiding non-European titles.
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Data integrity
Never fabricate showtimes, availability or figures. Every record carries its source and its last update time.
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Lightweight infrastructure
Prove that a respectful, fast discovery service can run on ordinary shared hosting, without heavy infrastructure.
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Privacy by design
Optional accounts, minimal personal data, no advertising trackers.
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Architecture
How the data flows
Data is fetched on a schedule, never on page view. Each provider is called within its documented quotas, responses are cached, and the platform stops calling a provider as soon as it reports a limit.
Cinema films and TMDB titles are matched automatically when the evidence is strong (title, original title, year, external identifiers). Uncertain cases go to an editorial review queue instead of being guessed.
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Potential stakeholders
Who this could serve
These are the groups the project is designed to be useful for. None of them is currently a partner of the project.
Audiences
People looking for what to watch tonight, in a nearby cinema or on a service they already use.
Independent cinemas
Venues whose programmes deserve the same visibility as large chains.
Distributors and producers
Teams that want European films to be found after release.
Researchers
People studying film circulation and availability across European countries.
Cultural institutions
Organisations promoting film heritage and audience development.
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Areas of work
Workstreams
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Data integration
Robust, quota-aware synchronisation with TMDB and API Cinéma, including retries and incremental updates.
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Title matching
Reliable links between cinema listings and catalogue titles, with a human review queue.
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Editorial tools
Administration screens to correct, hide or complete data, with corrections protected from automatic overwrites.
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Accessibility and performance
Fast pages that work on modest devices and with assistive technologies.
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Licensing and compliance
Clear separation between non-commercial development use and licensed commercial use of each data source.
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Stages
Timeline
Stages are listed in order. No dates are announced until they can be committed to.
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Stage 1
Concept and data review
Choice of licensed data sources and review of their terms of use.
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Stage 2
Working platform
Catalogue, cinema and streaming pages, synchronisation, matching and administration tools.
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Stage 3
Wider cinema coverage
Additional countries, depending on available data sources and licences.
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Stage 4
Evaluation
Measuring data quality and usefulness, and publishing what was learned.
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Status
Current status
Live coverage today
- Cinema showtimes: no country imported yet.
- TMDB: development / non-commercial use.
- API Cinéma: inactive.
Implemented
- Film and series catalogue from TMDB
- Streaming, rental and purchase availability by country
- Cinema venues and showtimes (where imported)
- Automatic and manual title matching
- Optional accounts, watchlist and favourites
In development
- Broader cinema coverage within the API quota
- Improved matching for re-releases and festival titles
Under research
- Cinema data sources for other European countries
- Measuring how complete streaming availability data is
Possible future work
- Open data exports where licences allow it
- Accessibility information for screenings
Collaboration
Interested in the project?
If you work for a cinema, a distributor, a cultural institution or a research team and want to discuss data, feedback or collaboration, we would be glad to hear from you. We will only mention organisations on this page once a collaboration actually exists and they have agreed to be named.
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Please note
Disclaimers
- Cinevia is an independent project. It has no partners, sponsors or public funding at this stage.
- This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
- Cinema showtimes are only available for countries actually imported from API Cinéma; at launch this coverage is limited to France.
- Streaming availability comes from TMDB (data provided by JustWatch) and can be incomplete or out of date. Always check with the service before subscribing or buying.
- Figures shown elsewhere on the site are computed live from the database; no statistics are estimated or invented.