Did I achieve my 2024 moviewatching goal?
In 2024 I tried to watch more movies from outside the US than inside it. I just realized that in the holiday rush, I'd never checked to see whether I actually succeeded.
I use Letterboxd to track my moviewatching habits and was using it to track my status on my goal, too. It turns out that I watched 111 movies in 2024, and according to Letterboxd, 56 of them were fullly or partially produced in the US. So I guess if we define my goal as "make sure that more than half of my movies were not produced in the US at all," then I just barely failed the goal.
I know, in fact, exactly which movie to blame - it was Nosferatu, which I watched on December 28th in a theater in New York. Damn you, Eggers!
But... if we define my goal as a goal to make sure that more than half of my movies were at least partially produced outside the US, then I achieved that much more decisively. Looking at my US films reveals that a pretty substantial number of them were produced in 2+ countries. Four out of five of my Canadian films were partially produced in the US, and two of them have three countries listed (Did you know BlackBerry was partially produced in Finland??).
I think this is how I failed the more rigorous standard... for example, I thought Children of Men was safely not-American, but I didn't research it before choosing to watch it, and it's actually a US and UK co-production... which is probably something I should expect from many UK films. Similarly, the indie film Leonor Will Never Die is also a US co-production, and I picked that one specifically because it is set in the Philippines, is in Tagalog, and was made by a Filipina director.
I haven't done the math on what percentage of my US films were partially produced outside the country or by creatives from other countries, but a cursory glance suggests it's a substantial number - I've already counted six of them. So I'm gonna give myself a silver star for this challenge... I gave it an honest shot and just didn't research enough of these, or decide how rigorous my standards were before beginning.
I think a more aggressive goal would be for me to spend a year mostly watching movies that were not produced in either North America or Europe, and to pick the more exclusionary, rigorous standard - to exclude movies with partial production in either of those regions. I think this is something I would have to plan carefully... I like to watch a lot of movies, and if I turn on any streaming service or go to see anything in the theaters, it's very easy to get dragged into watching something from either of these continents. And they add up fast!
I dunno if I am ready to make this decision for 2026. I think I'd have to stock up on media. That said... I am already stocking up on media for what I anticipate will be a bit of an "open internet" winter over the next few years. I could make this a secondary goal? I'll think about it!