Batch 6
Quite a frustrating search this time, because Copilot didn't seem to want to suggest anything useful. I kept throwing countries at it for it to check to see what's available only to get bizarre replies along the lines of "x, y and z have been released, but they're not out on disc yet. Here are some other titles which also don't count" which struck me as a particularly irritating search result.
I get it, I'm not using the AI the way it expects to be used (I'm sure it would generate a brilliant email for me to send to Canal+ to ask them what films they'd released from less mainstream countries), but that doesn't stop the actual searching part from being frustrating.
What's particularly irksome is that I'm trying to cross off the easy countries from the list so that I can see what the hard ones are actually going to be. But at the moment they're all hard ones because I don't know what I'm looking for. You'd expect "hi, Copilot, can you recommend some films from Qatar that have been released on DVD?" to actually result in something useful. It doesn't. It results in something very much like this:
"If what you want is Qatar‑connected films that actually exist on DVD or Blu‑ray, there are a few — but they fall into two categories:
- DFI‑funded international co‑productions (the majority of Qatar’s film output)
- Documentaries shot in or about Qatar (rarer, but more “Qatarian”)
Below is a clean, grounded list based on what’s verifiably available on disc.
🎬 1. The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012) — Blu‑ray & DVD
A Doha Film Institute co‑production; widely released on physical media.
Why it counts: Strong Qatari funding involvement; easy to source on disc in the UK.
🎬 2. Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (2014) — Blu‑ray & DVD
Another DFI‑backed project with global distribution.
Why it counts: Not Qatar‑set, but firmly part of Qatar’s funded film slate.
🎬 3. Day of the Falcon / Black Gold (2011) — DVD & Blu‑ray
Co‑produced by the Doha Film Institute; widely available.
Why it counts: A major DFI prestige project with easy disc availability.
🎥 4. 25 Cats From Qatar (2025) — Blu‑ray
A documentary explicitly about Qatar’s street‑cat crisis.
Why it counts: One of the few Qatar‑themed documentaries with a confirmed Blu‑ray release.
🎥 5. Qatar (2012) — DVD
A French‑language documentary travel film about Qatar.
Why it counts: Not a narrative feature, but a Qatar‑focused documentary with a straightforward DVD release.
What’s not showing up in the search results
Notably absent from the search output are The Workers Cup (2017) and Born in Gaza (2014) — both of which do have DVDs in reality, but they didn’t appear in this search batch. If you want, I can run a targeted search specifically for those titles."
An explanation as to why they didn't appear in the search batch (or even what the term 'search batch' actually means) wasn't forthcoming, so I was left to try to work out using Google, eBay and Amazon what I could actually find to buy. Reassuringly, it does seem that no matter what I look for there's something out there, but less reassuringly the something can be £50 to £100, and I'm not prepared to spend that amount. Yet. We'll see how desperate I become when I only have 12 countries left to go.
With careful searching I did eventually manage to find six titles, two of them on Blu-ray, so at least I'm still getting somewhere.
Batch Six — Countries Acquired
Hungary White God (2014)
Bulgaria Roseville (2013)
Romania The Whistlers (2019)
Ukraine The Tribe (2014)
Georgia And Then We Danced (2019)
Slovenia The Curse of Valburga (2019)
Outlay this batch: £50.68
Total outlay so far: £399.70
Total countries acquired: 30
Cost per country so far: £13.32
Countries Remaining: 124