Film Circles: one year in, and what we've learned about online film discussion
When we launched Film Circles in March 2025, we weren't sure anyone would join. We'd been running PölderPlay for six years at that point, building a library and a community around watching — but discussion had always been informal, fragmented across the members' forum. Film Circles was our attempt to make it intentional.
A year on, we have 340 active Circles, roughly 4,000 members participating in at least one, and a clearer sense of what makes these discussions actually work. This is an honest account of what we got right, what we got wrong, and what surprised us.
What we got right: the format
The core format has held up well. Each Circle has 8–12 members. They watch one film over a two-week period and discuss it in a dedicated thread — asynchronously, at their own pace, in writing. No video calls. No live chat. Just written responses, contributed whenever.
The asynchronous writing format was our most deliberate choice and our most vindicated one. We'd seen what happens in real-time film discussion — people talk over each other, conversations get derailed by whoever speaks loudest, nuance gets lost in the pressure to respond immediately. Written, asynchronous discussion rewards the people who need to think before they write. It turns out those people often have the most interesting things to say.
We also got the group size right. We experimented briefly with groups of 20 — the numbers looked better, more people reached per Circle — but the discussions suffered immediately. At 20 people, the thread becomes overwhelming; members start feeling like they need to respond to everything or they're falling behind. At 8–12, everyone's voice is audible. You can hold the whole conversation in your head.
What we got wrong: moderation
We underestimated how much moderation matters, and how different moderation in a film discussion context is from forum moderation generally.
The most common failure mode in our early Circles wasn't hostility — it was passivity. One or two members would write substantial responses in the first few days; others would feel intimidated and stop contributing; by the end of the two weeks, the "discussion" was three people talking to each other while nine people read along silently. We called these ghost Circles internally, and they were more common than we'd like to admit in the first few months.
Our fix was to introduce what we call a "seeder" — a member in each Circle who's been in at least three previous Circles and whose job is explicitly to ask questions rather than make statements. Not to perform expertise, but to generate genuine curiosity. The seeder role reduced ghost Circles by about 60% within the first month of implementation.
"The best Film Circle discussions aren't the ones with the most confident voices. They're the ones where someone asks a question that nobody had thought to ask."
The genre problem
We discovered that not all films work equally well in the Circle format, and the genre patterns surprised us.
Documentaries consistently produce the best discussions. We think it's because documentaries make their arguments explicit — there's a position to agree or disagree with, which gives people something concrete to respond to. A drama can be resisted or avoided in discussion; a documentary that argues something demands engagement with the argument.
Very long films — anything over 2h30 — produce lower completion rates and consequently thinner discussions. We've adapted by being more selective about which long films we programme for Circles. Jeanne Dielman at 3h21m was our most audacious experiment; it worked, but only because the group was exceptionally committed.
Short films work surprisingly well. We'd assumed the brevity would limit discussion, but the reverse is often true — with less running time, members pay closer attention to individual moments, and the discussions are often more formally precise than those about features.
What surprised us: the friendships
We built Film Circles as a discussion feature. We didn't expect it to produce lasting relationships between members who've never met in person — but it has, repeatedly.
We've had two Circle groups that continued meeting informally after their two weeks ended, organising their own watching schedules outside the platform. We know of at least four pairs of members who met in Circles and now correspond regularly. One group has been meeting monthly for eight months, cycling through films by a single director.
This was not something we designed for, and it's probably the thing we're proudest of.
What's next
We're considering three changes for the next iteration: a longer format (four weeks instead of two for certain films), a "retrospective" mode where older Circles can be reactivated for new members who want to join an existing conversation, and a way for members to propose films for their own Circle rather than accepting our programming.
That last one is the most interesting and the most uncertain. There's a version of it that makes the Circles feel more genuinely owned by their members; there's also a version where the programming quality drops because members default to safe choices. We're running a small pilot this quarter.
If you're a member and you're not in a Film Circle yet, you're missing the best part of PölderPlay. That's not marketing — it's just true.