robert_selth's profile

16 Messages

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302 Points

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025 7:26 PM

Solved

Counting a MIFED release

The film market MIFED, now defunct, was a long-running annual industry expo, held in Milan, where films were screened for purchase (mostly by studios). As far as I can tell, that means a screening at MIFED should not count as a release on IMDb, as we don't count private and/or industry screenings, only screenings open to the public. I have noticed, however, that Heathers (1988) has a MIFED screening listed as its first release. Indeed, this listing is the only reason the film appears as 1988 rather than 1989, as the next-earliest release is the premier at Sundance in January 1989. Can anyone confirm whether a MIFED screening should or should not count as a release on IMDb?

Employee

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7.7K Messages

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184.9K Points

2 months ago

@robert_selth This is a good point and we used to have an exception coded for MIFED which looks like it has been lost at some point over time. The year-in-title has been updated to 1989 and will be reflected on the site shortly. Thanks for reporting this.

16 Messages

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302 Points

Hi @Col_Needham - Thanks for explaining this and good to see the change. I also appreciate you responding so quickly! Just to clarify, should this change where the film appears in search results etc, or only change the display year on its page? Heathers does now appear as 1989 on its page, but when I sort my own ratings by year, or run a search for films in a given year, Heathers still shows up in the 1988 results and not in the 1989 results. Personally I find this messy and unsatisfying. It creates the weird anomaly of a film displaying as "Heathers [1989]" in a list titled "Release date: January 1, 1988 to December 31, 1988"! And of course it means users who want, for example, to view all their ratings for films for 1989 will have Heathers absent from the site's results even though it's now officially a 1989 film. Is this meant to be the situation with an override in place for the MIFED release date?

16 Messages

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302 Points

Hi @Col_Needham - Any word on the above? The film is still displaying as 1988 on some pages and 1989 on others, as described in my last comment.

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Since these are not public screenings and the software to hold the year-in-title at the first public screening is no longer functioning across all areas, we have removed the MIFED release dates. You should find that Heathers (1989) is correctly sorted now (or at the latest by tomorrow). Thanks again for drawing our attention to the issue.

16 Messages

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302 Points

Thanks for confirming, and I'm glad to see the change; I agree that makes a lot more sense.