Inspiration

We love movies, but deciding what to watch is weirdly hard. You end up googling “best movies to watch,” scrolling through ten listicles, and still not picking anything. For three of us, this was also our first hackathon, so we wanted to build something we’d actually use while learning how a full website works from front to back.

What it does

Find Your Film gives you one place to browse movies, so you don’t have to search blindly. The site uses scrollable rows of films, in a carousel layout like a streaming service, so you can explore by [genre / trending / category] and find something that catches your eye. It isn’t tied to any one platform: it covers movies in general, not just what’s on a single service.

How we built it

We built the frontend in React, with the carousel rows and browsing experience as the core of the design. The backend is a Node.js/Express server that [pulls movie data from ___ API] and serves it to the frontend. Both are deployed on Render.

Challenges we ran into

Most of our team had never built a backend before, so we learned the stack from the ground up during the weekend. Debugging was tough when we were still figuring out how the pieces connected: getting the frontend and backend talking to each other, and getting both deployed on Render, took a lot of trial and error.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We shipped a working, deployed full-stack site in one weekend, with a team where most of us were first-time hackers. We’re also proud of how the browsing UI turned out.

What we learned

We learned how a frontend and a backend fit together, how to work with an external API, and how to deploy a real site. We also learned how to split up work and debug as a team under time pressure. And we learned that building websites is a lot of fun.

What's next for Find Your Film

Streaming links: Partner with platforms like Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max so users can jump straight from a movie to where they can watch it. Personal profiles: Let users save favorite genres, the services they subscribe to, and movies they’ve liked, so recommendations fit them. Social features: Add friends and send specific movie recommendations to specific people, making the site more fun and giving people a reason to come back.