Searching for a film
There are a few ways to find films on Kanopy:
On the Kanopy website
- Browsing the homepage
You can browse the shelves on your Kanopy homepage to see newly added films, lists of related films, and more. - Browsing by genre
Select Browse at the top of the homepage to see genre options and select one to browse. - Searching by title or keyword
Select Search at the top of the homepage to search by title or keyword. See the tips below to refine your results.
Tips to refine searches
Here are some tips to help narrow down your search results and find exactly what you're looking for.
Use suggested matches and filters
After searching, you'll see suggested matches and filters.
Suggested matches are shelf categories based on your search term that help to narrow down the results.
Filters can help further refine your results by genre, language, caption availability, and whether or not a film has PPR (public performance rights).
Search for an exact title or phrase
Enter your search term in quotation marks to ensure your results include the exact title or phrase.
Example: Searching for "Killing Us Softly" will bring up the exact film. Searching for "Group theory" will bring up films that must have the phrase "group theory."
Search for two terms
Include the Boolean operator "AND" between search terms to ensure your results contain both words, not just either word.
Example: Searching for "American AND politics" will bring up films that contain both words. Film titles that have only one of the words won't appear in the results.
Exclude terms
Include the Boolean operator "NOT" before a search term to exclude it from your results.
Example: Searching for "environment NOT learning" will bring up films that contain the word "environment" but not the word "learning."
Use wildcard searches
Include an asterisk (*) with a search term to perform a wildcard search, which will search for similar words at the same time.
Example: Searching for "politic*" will bring up anything containing the words "politic," "politics," "political," etc. "Wom*n" will search for both "women" and "woman."
On the Kanopy mobile app
- Browsing the homepage
Select Home in the bottom navigation bar to browse the shelves and see newly added films, lists of related films, and more. - Browsing by genre
Select Browse in the bottom navigation bar to see genre options. Select a genre to browse shelves of subcategories within that genre. - Searching by title or keyword
Select Search in the bottom navigation bar to search by title or keyword. Video suggestions will populate as you type. Tap Subjects, People, or Companies to search within those categories instead.