Renoir: we map cinema

There are no ratings in Renoir. No stars, no scores, no averages of strangers. You watch, you keep your own record. One number does exist: the CRI. It measures influence, never quality: how much of cinema runs through a film or a person, who learned from it, what it taught, how early it arrived. The app tells you exactly what it measures and what it never will. There is a map. Films and people sit in it like planets, and any name opens into everyone they worked with and everything those people made. Cinema is one long conversation between people who watched each other work; the map lets you follow it. More than three thousand films, curated with intention. Tokyo Story is here, and Ashes and Diamonds, and The Trial, and Sholay, and Akira. Behind them stand nineteen thousand people, including the cinematographers and editors most apps never bother to hold. There is no feed. The recommendations you see are reasoned on your phone from what you have liked, or handed to you by someone. Nothing here is designed to keep you scrolling. Get recommendations from friends, hand one back. Recommendations travel with a note, and you can have three open with a person at a time. Your favorite films, directors, actors and soundtracks are yours to show on your profile, and you choose who sees them. There are no ads in Renoir and no third-party analytics. Just keep a watchlist, a log of what you have seen, and a big bag of popcorn.