Cinema certificate (film rating)

Classification is awarded by a national body and differs by country: the same film can be 12 in one territory, 15 in another and PG-13 somewhere else. The distributor obtains the certificate. Admitting the audience correctly is the cinema's responsibility, and in most jurisdictions it is a licensing condition rather than a guideline — breach it and the licence that lets you operate is what is at risk.

Two practical points follow. Trailers must be certificated appropriately for the feature they precede, which constrains what you can put in a show playlist. And the certificate has to be visible everywhere the customer chooses: the website, the app, the listing and the box office, not just on the poster.

Online sale is where most venues are weakest on this. A customer buying on a phone at midnight is not being asked their age by anybody, and a certificate shown only in small print at the bottom of a film page does not amount to much of a check.

The workable answer is to surface the certificate at the point of choice rather than only on the film page, and to make the door policy explicit at checkout — that ID may be required, and that a ticket sold is not a guarantee of admission. That protects the customer from a wasted journey and the venue from an argument at the door.

For festivals and unclassified titles the rules differ again, often with a local authority waiver, and that is worth confirming with your licensing authority rather than assuming.