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Saturday, February 20th, 2021 12:34 PM

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Film Main Pages Routinely Misidentify Swiss Films

Many Swiss films are incorrectly identified as being French, German or Italian.

For example, the main page of "Polizischt Wäckerli (1955)" ascribes it to "West Germany", whereas it is a Swiss film.

When I attempt to correct this under "Country of Origin", I see that Switzerland is already listed as the only one.

Why then does the main page header say "10 August 1956 (West Germany) "?

Presumably this comes from the "Release Dates":

Switzerland 13 October 1955 (German speaking region)
West Germany 10 August 1956
which are no doubt correct.  But why does the second release date, which incorrectly identifies the film as German, appear in the header instead of the first one, which would correctly show Switzerland as the country of origin?

Champion

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4 years ago

It doesn't identify the film as German, it identifies the release date as German.

But the attributes used on Swiss release dates stop them from being displayed on the title page, and that could perhaps be fixed somehow.

Employee

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4 years ago

Hi rsbrux -

 

As Peter mentioned above, the "West Germany" display you pointed out is not the country of the film but rather associated with the West Germany release date.

 

I am currently confirming with our tech team, though I suspect the reason for the West Germany display over the Switzerland display is due to the attribute listed alongside the Swiss Release Date.

 

As soon as I get confirmation from the tech team I will update you here.

 

Cheers!

Employee

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4 years ago

Hi rsbrux -

 

I'm following up here to confirm that the "West Germany" Release Date display is correct, as per our current display logic, which is to display the wide release.

 

As the Swiss Release Date is not a wide release, we are displaying the West German release, which is a wide release date.

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

Champion

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Unfortunately, IMDb's requirement of attributes for all Swiss release dates means that you can never list what you call a wide release or a release without an attribute in any medium.

Region needed for Switzerland

Request: Don't require Attribute for Swiss TV release dates

83 Messages

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1.3K Points

4 years ago

@Michelle 

The „current display logic“ is illogical, and unfairly penalizes small countries like Switzerland.  The country and date of what you call „the first wide release“ is prominently displayed at the top of the page, without any label or qualification, giving the impression that this is the country of origin and the official release date.  The true country of origin is buried much further down, and the correct release date is relegated to the back pages.  This „policy“ reinforces the impression that small countries have no film industry worth mentioning.  That the „wide release date“ is also used in the results list of searches compounds the problem, as the „first wide release date“ may fall in a different year from the official release date.  Given the propensity for reusing titles (or elements of them), this can make it more difficult to identify the film sought.

Employee

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4 years ago

Hi rsbrux and Peter -

 

Thanks for your additional comments on the current display and policy.  I have passed along your feedback and this specific issue as a use-case to the appropriate team for visibility on Release Dates and future improvements.

 

Thanks again!

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3 years ago

In case a further example is needed for the ridiculous effects of the current display policy, the Canadian film "Haunter", which premiered at the SXSW film festival in March 2013, has prominently displayed under the title bar, "17 October 2013 (Ukraine)"!

Please display in this location the date of the premiere and the country which produced the film, in this case, 9 March 2013, Canada.