Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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This guide, styled in the same way as the Guide to Finding Articles/Chapters, is designed to help
locate films (and shows).
Background
This guide systematically goes through every option listed in the flowchart with detailed
explanations. First a quick table of contents with brief descriptions of each part.
Part I - IMDb Scout: An essential film piracy tool that automates many of the steps below.
Part II - Streaming: Overview of streaming sites (pirate and legal) and how to navigate them.
Part III - Torrent Sites: Overview of common torrent sites with usage instructions.
Part IV - Effective Search Engine Usage: Film-specific tips for using search engines effectively.
Part V - Direct Download Sites: A short list of databases of films, rare and otherwise. Following
the instructions in Part III often obviates the need to consult them (since search engines lead
there anyway).
Part VI - Private Trackers: A quick overview of private torrent trackers.
Part VII - Groups: A small list of groups for soliciting and sharing films.
General Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
● What’s IMDb?
○ The Internet Movie Database. Alongside Letterboxd and FilmAffinity, likely the
most comprehensive list of films on the web along with reviews (user and critic),
production details, etc.
● What’s IMDb Scout?
○ A browser plugin (primarily for computer browsers) that searches public and
private pirate sites for films by IMDb identifier (the nine-character code for every
film starting with tt that comes at the end of an IMDb URL). It displays a neat list
of sources where the film is available right on the IMDb page of a particular film,
thus obviating the need to manually search (covered in the rest of this guide). See
below for a screenshot.
1. Install Tampermonkey or Violentmonkey for your browser. (Tampermonkey supports
more browsers, but the two are otherwise equivalent.) After installation, put it in your
browser toolbar for easier access.
a. Note: Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey are designed to work on computer
browsers. Mobile users can Google search for Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey
iOS/Android/etc. to try to find workarounds, but they are not guaranteed to work.)
2. Install IMDb Scout. (This version also works but does not get updated as frequently—use
the first link (IMDb Scout Mod) for the latest updates.)
3. To configure, go to any IMDb page (example), click the Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey
icon in your browser toolbar, and then click Settings under IMDb Scout.
4. Now add public download sites and private download sites (i.e., private trackers, see Part
VI), choose whether to display icons or text, etc.
a. As a basic minimum, enable Cinema of the World (listed as WC in IMDb Scout
settings), RARBG, Rarefilm, Rarelust, RuTracker, The Pirate Bay (listed as TPB
in IMDb Scout settings), 1337x, and YggTorrent. Enabling more sites may
increase the load time of a page slightly (no more than a few seconds), but it will
be useful nonetheless to exhaust all options.
b. You can enable private download sites (see Part VI for more information on
these), but they won’t work unless you have an account on that particular site and
are logged into it (with the same browser).
c. You can also enable subtitle search by enabling the 2nd search bar (see the
checkbox at the top of the settings pane) and enabling subtitle sites (again, in
settings, toward the bottom) accordingly.
d. You can choose to display the download sites as icons or as text (icon view is
suggested for simplicity). If you choose icons, a green border generally indicates
that the site has the film, a yellow border indicates that it does not, and a red
border indicates a search error (e.g., could not connect to site).
e. Be sure to click Save at the bottom of the settings pane, then close the settings
pane and refresh the page.
5. You may get a popup saying “A userscript wants to access a cross-origin resource.” Click
always allow on all domains to let IMDb Scout do its job, and you’ll never see this again.
6. NOTE: RARBG may show a red border when you first load IMDb Scout—to
overcome this, click the RARBG icon (for any film) and enter the CAPTCHA as
prompted. Then, refreshing the IMDb page (forcing IMDb Scout to reload as well)
should fix the error.
7. Next time you are looking for a film, come to the IMDb page for the film, let IMDb
Scout load, and click on any of the sites in which the film is found to go directly to that
pirate site. This is the easiest way to download (not stream) a film and saves you the
trouble of following all of the subsequent steps in the following parts of this guide.
Part II - Streaming
Quotation marks around a phrase tell the search engine that results must have a match of
that exact phrase whereas quotation marks around a single term tell the search engine that
that term must appear in every result. They are quite useful for films with long names.
(Searching for Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles with or without
quotation marks yields different results, for instance.) Once you have located the film on
a Putlocker or 123Movies mirror (warning: there are fake mirrors too—it is fake if it asks
you to log in), you may have to click through some ads and close some popups to start
the film (AdBlock Plus may help), but after that, it ought to be smooth sailing. Use
Substital to add subtitles of your choice.
3. YouTube/Vimeo: Fairly self-explanatory. The quotation mark syntactical rule applies to
these search engines as well. YouTube geoblocking can be visualized here (for specific
videos) and circumvented easily with a virtual private network (VPN) or proxy. Vimeo
on Demand often has newer films that can be rented/purchased for nominal fees. As with
YouTube, sometimes Vimeo on Demand videos are geo-restricted, but this can be easily
circumvented with a VPN (and Vimeo even tells you which countries the film is available
in). If you do not have a VPN (instructions here if you want to get one), you can use Tor
(instructions for specifying country). Always rent (never buy) because the films are easily
downloadable with Vimeo Video Downloader. (Note: Using Video DownloadHelper
with Vimeo causes this playback error in some media players so is not recommended.)
Tip: on geo-restricted Vimeo on Demand videos, after you’ve rented the video, you can
access it from anywhere (i.e., the geo-restriction only applies only for the payment, not
for the actual viewing of the video).
4. Leonflix: No longer being updated (last update: September 2019), and sometimes buggy,
but otherwise a nice app for streaming films (usually sourced from Putlocker and
123Movies) and circumventing popups and ads.
5. Popcorn Time: An app with a similar interface to Leonflix, except instead of streaming,
it downloads films via BitTorrent and then plays them in its integrated media player (a
sort of ‘simulated streaming’ because of the interface). Ideal for those who value ease of
use over video quality.
6. Odnoklassniki (a.k.a. OK.ru): Однокла́ссники (“classmates”). Russian video
streaming site with lax copyright enforcement. Searching in Cyrillic may yield better
results.
7. VK: Short for ВКонта́кте (“in contact”). Russian social media network which also hosts
a lot of videos and often full films. Same advice as with OK.ru.
1. RARBG (RAR (Roshal Archive) Bulgaria): A public tracker with a wide selection of
films, TV shows, and other files. Search for the film you need, and if RARBG has it, it
will likely have a few different copies at different resolutions. Read here for the
differences between different resolutions. More pixels means better quality (but also
larger file size).
2. RuTracker: A Russian tracker (use Google Chrome for automatic translation) with a
very large library of music, films, shows, etc. The search function is better when logged
in, so you can create your own account for free or use an existing account from
BugMeNot.
3. 1337x: Large general-content public tracker similar to RARBG.
4. The Pirate Bay: One of the oldest torrent trackers around (founded in 2003). RARBG
usually covers all you need, but The Pirate Bay can occasionally dig up things not found
in other places.
5. YggTorrent: French semi-private tracker (searching is free, downloading is
members-only) with a lot of French and foreign content.
6. Multi-tracker torrent search engines: These sites function as search engines for
torrents, which can be useful for finding torrents without searching in individual trackers:
a. TorLook
b. MagnetDL
c. BTDB
d. Torlock
e. DaMagNet
f. BTDigg
g. Torrentino
h. Skytorrents
i. Zooqle
● Google is the world’s largest search engine and is quite useful and reliable for many
things, but it has many piracy sites (like Putlocker and 123Movies) blacklisted such that
they do not show up in search results even if you search for them. Hence, it is wise to use
both Google and DuckDuckGo, a newer search engine that does not block piracy sites.
Another useful one is Yandex Search, which often has full films under video search as
well.
● Use the video option in search engines to search for videos, and then use the length filter
to filter for long videos. Google video search can be futile because of copyright blocks,
but DuckDuckGo and Yandex have powerful video searches.
● As mentioned in Part I, quotation marks in search queries on Google and DuckDuckGo
search for exact phrases, which can be useful for films with longer names or films which
share names with films made in a different year. Quotation marks around a single search
term tell the search engine that that search term must appear in every result.
● Another useful tip is using the hyphen just before a word you do not want in your search
results. For example, you might search “employee of the month” “2005” -2006 to
indicate that you want search results that have exact matches with the phrase “employee
of the month,” contain 2005, and do not contain 2006 (in order to find the 2005 film
Employee of the Month) . You might also put the director’s surname in quotes and the
2006 film’s director’s surname just after a hyphen to exclude it. Search is not
case-sensitive.
● Sometimes you might find a removed YouTube/Vimeo video or a page where the video
was hosted at one point in time but no longer.
○ To retrieve older versions of (most) webpages, you can use various internet
archive and cache tools. This is a useful Chrome plugin that serves that purpose,
or you can copy-paste the website URL into sites like the Wayback Machine and
archive.today to retrieve old/cached versions of pages (if they have been saved).
RSSing.com is also useful for accessing defunct pages (via RSS feeds).
SignalHire can also be useful for looking up contact information on webpages for
film distributors that no longer exist, etc. Using Inspect Element to find links of
embedded videos or even removed videos (that might still have links in the
HTML page of a website) can also be useful.
○ BitChute also has a lot of videos that have been removed from YouTube:
conspiracy theory videos, hate speech videos, etc.
● Don’t forget to try searching for films with their original-language names (both with
original scripts and Romanized)! Wikipedia and Letterboxd can be useful for finding
original-language names in their native scripts. Google Chrome is useful for automatic
translation (of the results). Utilize quotation marks in the same fashion to force exact
matches.
○ Tip specific to Chinese films (or even other films on Chinese download sites):
Baidu Wangpan is a very popular Chinese cloud sharing service that is used by
most Chinese piracy sites to share films. In order to download films from it, you
will need to create a free account on Baidu and install Baidu NetDisk on your
computer (a Baidu Wangpan page for any particular file will instruct you to do
that if you try to download the file).
○ Baidu NetDisk downloads Baidu Wangpan file painlessly (albeit slowly) to your
computer at a throttled speed (unless you purchase a premium membership, which
is possible through Alipay Tour Pass for non-Chinese residents, or find a
cracked/patched version of Baidu NetDisk). Following the search engine tips here
(especially when searching with original-language original-script names) will
likely lead you to Baidu Wangpan links for Chinese films, but you can also search
for such links through PanTianXia.
○ Many Chinese piracy forums require registration and sometimes even a small
payment (“VIP membership” or an invitation that must be bought) in order to
view download links. This is not a scam—it is quite common in many forums
(e.g., 爱笑聚, 余斗余斗的, etc.) and you can purchase it (often quite cheaply)
with Alipay Tour Pass if there are no other options available (don’t forget to
check BugMeNot).
● For newer films or those still doing film festival showings (i.e., not yet commercially
released):
○ Use the search time tool in Google (click Tools and then Any Time after
searching for something) or DuckDuckGo (click Any Time after searching) or
Yandex Search (click the settings icon after searching) to search for recent hits
that can lead to online screenings in the recent past or immediate future.
○ Sometimes it pays off to find out where a film has been screened and if those
festivals or places have a streaming service. For example, a lot of films that
played on International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), will appear on IFFR
Unleashed. Letterboxd can also be useful: go to the page of a film, click the blue
squares icon under the film poster which shows lists that the film appears in, and
then see if the film appears in festival lists or in a 'online'/'for free'/etc. list
(sometimes you can even find private Vimeo links with passwords). Letterboxd
also allows sorting by service.
○ If you're a film professional and have a FestivalScope Pro account, it is worth
checking there.
○ Searching on Twitter and Facebook and other social networks can be a useful way
to find screenings of the film or even contact information for the director.
LinkedIn (paired with SignalHire) can also be an effective way to find contact
information for directors in case their films are not available anywhere else (often
the case for films that never got commercial releases and were only shown at
festivals, etc.). And emailing directors (especially independent filmmakers)
asking to see their film is often successful.
● For older films (e.g., those only released on VHS) or other restricted-distribution films
(e.g., those only available for institutional purchase: example), it can be helpful to search
for the film on WorldCat, an online database of library catalogs around the world. If you
are unable to find a film through any of the methods in this guide but find a DVD (or
VHS) in a library on WorldCat, you may be able to ask a friend (or friendly stranger on a
piracy-friendly group, see Part VII) located near the library to go there and make a rip for
you. Even current students and faculty of most universities may be able to access it
through interlibrary loan.
Search terms:
1. “film name” “mkv”: MKV stands for Matroska (from матрёшка, the Russian tea doll)
Video and is a popular video format that is used quite frequently in pirate movie releases.
(In fact, some private trackers, like Karagarga, have an MKV-only rule.) So, putting an
exact phrase query along with forcing MKV to be in every search result will likely catch
any pirate releases of the film if there are any. Note that there are plenty of fake sites that
will show up with queries like this, but they are harmless—it should be fairly evident that
they are fake.
2. “film name” “mp4”: MP4 is short (and the actual file extension, i.e., .mp4) for MPEG-4
(Moving Picture Experts Group Phase 4), a video format that is quite popular for sharing
short videos, etc., although not quite as common with pirate releases. Nonetheless, it’s
worth a search (if previous options have failed).
3. “film name” “avi”: AVI (Audio Video Interleave) is a video format common with older
pirate releases (e.g., with aXXo), so it is also worth a search.
4. “film name” “dvd9”: A DVD9 (Digital Versatile/Video Disc 9) is a dual-layer DVD
with 8.5 GB of capacity. DVD9 is often appended to pirate releases of untouched DVD
transfers (as opposed to rips, which are encoded versions of just the video, stripped of the
DVD menu, options, etc.). Movieworld is a pirate site that only has untouched DVDs and
Blu-Rays, and Cinematik is a private tracker that also only has untouched discs (i.e., rips
are not allowed to be uploaded).
5. “film name” “dvd5”: A DVD5 (Digital Versatile/Video Disc 5) is a standard DVD with
4.7 GB of capacity. DVD5 is also often appended to pirate releases of untouched DVD
transfers which are sourced from basic DVDs.
6. “film name year 1080p”: 1080p is a resolution format indicating 1920 by 1080 pixels.
Notice that the search query is enclosed by one set of quotation marks (unlike the
previous several search queries), i.e., it is looking for search results which will have
1080p directly after the film year. That is because many pirate rips have names in this
format. (You can verify this for yourself with a quick search on RARBG).
7. “film name year 720p”: 720p is a resolution format indicating 1280 by 720 pixels. Same
logic as above.
8. “film name dvd” (can also surround just “dvd” by quotation marks): Especially if the
above options fail, this one is useful for finding out if a DVD of the film even exists. If it
does, it’s likely it has been pirated, but if not, your only option may be to buy it.
9. “film name vhs” (can also surround just “vhs” by quotation marks): Many films
(particularly not very successful ones released prior to the advent of DVDs) were only
ever released on VHS. VHSRips are not unheard of in the piracy world but are generally
much less common than DVDRips (given the special equipment needed to make them).
10. General tip: especially for shorter/more common film names, it may be helpful to add a
search term with the director’s (sur)name. You can use the quotation mark syntax to force
it to appear in the results.
● There are many independent websites dedicated to hosting films (or links to file sharing
websites hosting them), rare and not—a good compendium can be found here and also
here. The below list is by no means comprehensive. It is also mostly favored towards
sites that are not (yet) covered by IMDb Scout (see Part I).
● The reason that this section comes after Part IV (as opposed to before) is that clever
search engine usage usually turns up these results without having to search each database
individually.
● A file sharing site (e.g., NitroFlare) is requiring me to purchase a premium account in
order to download files, what do I do?
○ Sometimes this can be circumvented with free premium link generators (see this
wiki) but usually only up to a certain file size (e.g., 500 MB). If a free premium
link generator does not work, then you might have to find the file on a different
site, ask a friend with a premium account, or buy one. It is almost always more
cost effective to buy a membership with a service like one of these (which allows
you to download premium from many different sites) than to buy premium
accounts on individual filesharing sites.
● I found a file split into multiple RAR files which will take forever to download manually,
what do I do?
○ RAR (Roshal Archive) files are simply compressed files, like ZIP files. They can
be decompressed with common applications found on Google. Multi-part RAR
archives can be irksome, but JDownloader, a download manager where you can
paste in a list of links, might help.
1. Cinema of the World: Many rare films from around the world. Uses NitroFlare links.
2. Rarefilm: Rare films. Uses NitroFlare links (some of them too large to be downloaded
without a premium account).
3. Hawkmenblues: Spanish-language rare film site. Typically has multiple download links
per file (e.g., Mega, MediaFire, NitroFlare, Upstore).
4. Reviviendo Viejas Joyas: A Spanish-language blog with many rare films. Uses 1fichier
links.
5. Francomac: French-language forum with many French and other films. Uses Uptobox
and MultiUp links.
6. Rarelust: Rare films. Uses FileBoom links. Included in IMDb Scout, so enable it there.
7. My Duck is Dead: Lots of films (including pornography), rare and others. Uses
NitroFlare links.
8. Ulož.to: Czech and Slovakian free file sharing service that often has rare films.
9. UbuWeb: A database of avant-garde films, poetry, audio, etc.
10. Patio de Butacas: Spanish-language forum (invitation-only) with lots of rare films,
mostly MEGA links.
11. Libertaire: Francophone anarchist forum with a documentary and film subforum with
direct download links.
12. Exploradores P2P: Spanish-language forum (login required for some pages, can create
own account or use BugMeNot) with eD2k (eDonkey) links (similar to
BitTorrent—eMule and aMule (x64 Mac version, compiled .app) are the clients).
13. DivX Clásico: Spanish-language eDonkey forum with lots of classic films.
14. DocuWiki: Index of documentaries on the eDonkey network. Also often has links to
MVGroup for concurrent torrent releases (login required but available via BugMeNot).
● As suggested by glamorous articles like this, private trackers for films often do have
access to gems unavailable virtually anywhere else since members of such trackers often
have access to archives or other private spaces from where films are not usually leaked.
● This wiki helps explain the concept of private trackers and the mystique behind them,
along with practical tips on entering the scene.
● Nota bene: The reason that private trackers are not featured in the flowchart is because
(1) most people are not members and (2) those who are members are likely already
familiar with the best places to find films. This is not meant to discourage anyone from
attempting to gain membership, though.
● So how do I get in?
○ Getting into top-tier (sometimes referred to as cabal) trackers can be difficult and
require seedboxes and lots of time and dedication, but some “gateway trackers”
like MyAnonamouse and RED allow people to apply for membership, and after
some time on the tracker, access their invite forums, where users can solicit
invites to other trackers and work their way up.
○ There are also tracker invite trading and selling marketplaces like InviteHawk and
TorrentInvites where one can purchase invites or accounts to trackers, but with
significant risk (since that is prohibited by virtually all private trackers and can
result in banning if discovered). Use these at your own risk—they are neither
recommended nor endorsed by this guide but simply included for purposes
of providing complete information.
1. PassThePopcorn: The single largest repository of films in the world. 213,511 films as of
October 2020, and the request fulfillment rate is decently high. Also very difficult to get
into—only members who have uploaded 50+ torrents are given invitations to give out.
Recruitment occurs on four other trackers as well, of which at least one can be joined
without an invitation.
2. Karagarga: The largest private tracker dedicated to rare, arthouse, independent, and
other non-mainstream films. 138,9256 films (quite a lot, considering their stringent
content rules—see pp. 91ff here for the Karagarga Manifesto) as of October 2020. Only
certain user classes receive invitations (to invite new users).
3. Cinematik: Large tracker dedicated to non-mainstream films. Untouched-only (i.e., no
rips, only full DVDs and Blu-Rays) rule. 65,039 torrents on the site as of October 2020.
Invitation capabilities are open for current members.
4. Cinemageddon: Tracker dedicated to B-grade and obscure films. Has plenty of
VHSRips. 176,379 torrents as of July 2020. Invitation capabilities for existing members
open.
5. BroadcasTheNet: Ratioless tracker dedicated to television shows, widely considered to
be the best for that genre.
6. There are many many more private trackers with varying levels of exclusivity and
accessibility—the wiki hyperlinked above is instructive.
● Private groups, chans, forums, etc. are also important resources in finding films,
particularly rare ones.
GENERAL FAQ