FilmMap MCP server

A Model Context Protocol server for the FilmMap atlas: 15,272 real filming locations across 161 countries, joined to the 12,762 films, series, video games, anime and manga recorded at them, with coordinates, fame ranking, per-place production lists and the source behind every claim.

It is already running. Point a client at the hosted endpoint — there is no install, no signup and no API key:

https://thefilmmap.com/mcp

Streamable HTTP, stateless, POST-only (a GET returning 405 is correct).

Client configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filmmap": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://thefilmmap.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Tools

Tool	What it does
where_was_it_filmed	Give a title, get the places it was shot at, each with its evidence
what_was_filmed_here	The inverse, and the question this atlas is unusual for answering: give a place, get everything recorded as made there
search_productions	Find productions by name, accent- and case-insensitive, best match first
search_locations	Find places by name, filterable by country or kind of place
locations_near	Places within a radius of a WGS84 coordinate, each with distance_km
top_locations	The atlas ranked, worldwide or inside one country or one kind of place
list_countries	Every country with how many filming locations it holds
get_statistics	Live aggregates — totals by medium and by kind of place, top countries, busiest places

What an answer will and will not claim

This is the part worth reading before wiring it into anything that writes prose.

Films and series are placed by filming location (P915). Video games, anime and manga are filmed nowhere, so they are placed by narrative location (P840) — where the story is set — and every record says which relation it carries. Repeating one as the other publishes a false claim.

A place is not a scene. P915 records that a production filmed at a place and stops there. Which scene was shot where is not in the data and must not be inferred from it.

Two kinds of evidence, never merged. Most links are Wikidata statements. Some are places named in a production's English Wikipedia Filming section, or a setting category its editors filed it under; those arrive in their own fields, labelled with the exact article and section they were read from. Say "per Wikipedia" when you repeat one.

Coverage is uneven and the server says so. 834 productions are recorded only at country level and appear with countries and no coordinates. A further 3,906 cannot be placed at all; they are published as a work list at thefilmmap.com/gaps/ so they can be fixed on Wikidata.

Data

Built from Wikidata, with photographs from Wikimedia Commons and article text linked rather than bundled. The factual records are CC0 and downloadable as GeoJSON and CSV from thefilmmap.com/data, also mirrored on GitHub.

The server reads one file, atlas-compact.json, which is the site's own wire format and is rebuilt on every deploy.

Running it yourself

ATLAS_JSON=/path/to/atlas-compact.json PORT=8896 node server.mjs

Or with Docker, which bakes the public copy of the atlas into the image:

docker build -t filmmap-mcp .
docker run -p 8896:8896 filmmap-mcp     # → http://localhost:8896/mcp

HOST defaults to 127.0.0.1; the container sets 0.0.0.0 because the default is unreachable from outside a container.

Licence

MIT for the server. The dataset it serves is CC0; photographs and Wikipedia text referenced by URL stay under their own licences.