The only information in the credits you can't trust

I was fishing around for something to watch on Sunday night and I saw on Kanopy, in a promotional section on Oscar-nominated or -winning films, the film The Teachers' Lounge from 2023, directed by Ilker Catak. It was nominated for best international feature last year, but I remember hearing it come up in 2024 conversations about the best of the year, possibly due to its 2024 American release. Actually, it had a limited U.S. release -- which likely describes the full ultimate size of that release, given that this is not the type of film that plays multiplexes -- on Christmas 2023. But in many countries, it only debuted in 2024, and some people who discuss their best of the year don't use the same rules I do in determining what qualifies where. 

So why, then, was the release date on Kanopy listed as 2022?

While I was watching, I got curious enough to indeed check these release dates. IMDB always lists the earliest one first, and in this case, that was a February 18, 2023 debut at the Berlin International Film Festival. 

You'll see on various streaming services, especially Australian ones, a later release year than the generally accepted release year for a movie, if they are giving the year it first appeared in Australia. (One example having been discussed here.) 

But an earlier release year? A movie cannot meaningfully be said to exist prior to its first festival screening.

"Must be a misprint," I thought, and was set to write a post with that as the thrust.

Then for some unknown reason, while I was putting things away and preparing to go to bed, I paid attention to the credits down to the very last words on screen, even though I was not expecting a Marvel-style post credits sequence. And then I saw the year listed as MMXXII.

So that's where Kanopy got it.

Which, if you think about it, makes sense. I have argued in the past that a movie's title should be listed as it appears in the movie, and for sure, you are meant to take every other credit listed anywhere at face value.

But the year that appears in the credits is the one piece of information you should look upon skeptically.

I'm not sure if the same rule of thumb would be followed in every instance, but I have to think the year you put in here is whatever year it currently happens to be at the time you are making the credits. That may not be true with a big Hollywood blockbuster, whose credits may be finished in one year even though they know for sure the film's release date is the following year. I suspect they would definitively forward-date it in that case.

But with a smaller movie about a conflict among staff and students at a school, whose exact debut is uncertain at the time the credits are completed, you would put in whatever year it was and then let the rest take care of itself, knowing only pedants like me would ever notice and take issue with any of the decisions they've made.

Of course, I don't take issue with anyone involved with The Teachers' Lounge putting in 2022 (or MMXXII) in the credits, because that made the most sense in the moment. I take issue, only slightly, with a streaming service like Kanopy using that as the release year on their site, when consulting any other source (such as IMDB) would have disabused them of any confusion.

That's it, I'm never using Kanopy again.