The Global Movie Map

Over the years, there have been a number of interactive maps that have plotted movies and TV shows based on where they were shot or set. There have also been several attempts to map novels by their settings.

StoryTerra takes this idea further - it maps movies, television dramas, and novels all in one place!

Zoom in on any location in the world on StoryTerra, and you can discover which movies and novels take place there. Thanks to a hierarchical location system (e.g., Paris → Île-de-France → France), you can explore at any scale, from a single city to an entire country. Each novel or movie set in the selected location appears as a color-coded card in the map sidebar, and you can click on these cards to read a synopsis of the selected title.

StoryTerra also has a powerful timeline feature. This allows you to filter results by centuries, decades, or even individual years. Whether you’re curious about ancient China or 1940s France, you can see exactly which stories align with that period. (Note: items appear to be mapped according to the date when they are set, rather than when they were written or released.)

The data for the map comes from publicly available datasets of books, movies, and TV shows. However, each item had to be manually checked for its setting and time period. Currently, there are just over 100,000 mapped items. Because of this careful curation process, some popular titles may not appear on the map.

For example, clicking on Brighton, UK, brings up around 40 results - a fair number. However, I can think of three classic movies set in Brighton, and one of them is missing. While StoryTerra includes Brighton Rock and Genevieve, the iconic Quadrophenia is absent from the map’s list of Brighton-based stories.

Although StoryTerra does not give a definitive list of TV shows, movies or novels set in a chosen location it does normally provide a reasonable selection of results. For me, that’s enough. When I travel, I enjoy reading novels set in my destination (both before and during the trip). I can definitely see myself using StoryTerra before visiting a new location to find movies to watch and novels to read that will help me connect with my holiday destination.