Where to find Movie Tapes and a Portable TV for Movie Night in ARC Raiders

Exact locations and item behavior for completing Apollo’s Movie Night quest in the Headwinds update.

By Pallav Pathak 6 min read
Where to find Movie Tapes and a Portable TV for Movie Night in ARC Raiders

The Movie Night quest in ARC Raiders asks you to bring Apollo two specific items: the Stack of Movie Tapes from Stella Montis and a Portable TV from the surface. Both items have fixed behavior and clear locations, and the quest only completes once you successfully extract with each item and hand them to Apollo in Speranza.

Quick answer: The Stack of Movie Tapes sits in a covered furniture pile in the southwest corner of Stella Montis’ Cultural Archives (immediately right at the bottom of the Atrium stairs), and the Portable TV is a Rare Residential loot item most commonly found in drawer and filing cabinet containers in Residential areas such as Buried City’s Buried Properties, Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Plaza Rosa, or in Residential hubs like The Blue Gate and Dam Battlegrounds’ Ruby Residence; extract with both items and turn them in to Apollo to finish Movie Night.


Movie Night quest state and requirements

Movie Night is a Headwinds quest given by Apollo in Speranza. It has three deterministic requirements:

  • Obtain a Portable TV as a world loot item.
  • Retrieve the Stack of Movie Tapes from Stella Montis’ Cultural Archives.
  • Extract and deliver both items to Apollo.

The quest only progresses when you extract with the quest items. Picking them up is not enough; they must survive extraction or be stored in a safe pocket that persists through death.

You know Movie Night is complete when Apollo’s objective line disappears from your quest list, and his interaction in Speranza changes to show the reward payout rather than the item delivery prompt. The interaction grants 3 Showstoppers, 3 Smoke Grenades, and a Fireworks Box.

Movie Night is a Headwinds quest given by Apollo in Speranza | Image credit: Embark Studios (via YouTube/@TroubleChute Basics)

Stack of Movie Tapes location in Cultural Archives (Stella Montis)

The Stack of Movie Tapes always spawns in one fixed spot inside Stella Montis.

Step 1: Enter Stella Montis and move toward the Cultural Archives, which sit on the lower level near the Atrium and Business Lounge. The most direct route is via the Atrium entrance above the Archives.

Step 2: From the Atrium, go down the main stairs into the Cultural Archives. As soon as you reach the bottom, turn immediately to your right and follow that side of the room toward the southwest corner.

Step 3: In that corner, locate a small cluster of old furniture covered with a white sheet, with a blue circle-and-cross symbol spray-painted on the wall behind it. Interact with this furniture pile to collect the Stack of Movie Tapes.

This interaction directly places the Stack of Movie Tapes in your inventory as a quest item. The item does not move between sessions and does not have random alternate spawns; it is always in this southwest corner furniture pile inside the Cultural Archives.

Step 4: Move the Stack of Movie Tapes into a safe pocket if your build has one. If the tapes sit only in a normal inventory slot and you die before extraction, they are lost, and the Cultural Archives step must be repeated.

Shredders patrol the Cultural Archives rows, but the tapes’ location is along the side rather than in the central aisles. Reaching the southwest corner from the Atrium entrance does not require moving deep into the patrol area, so a low-gear run focused solely on the tapes is viable.

You know this step has registered correctly when the Movie Night objective that references searching the Cultural Archives updates to a delivery or extraction objective once you pick up the Stack of Movie Tapes.

Move the Stack of Movie Tapes into a safe pocket if your build has one | Image credit: Embark Studios (via YouTube/@TroubleChute Basics)

Portable TV behavior and spawn rules

The Portable TV is treated as a Rare Residential loot item. It is not fixed to a single container, but it follows clear rules about where it can appear:

  • It spawns in Residential loot containers, particularly drawer units and filing cabinets.
  • These containers appear most often in Residential areas of surface maps.
  • The item can drop in multiple different regions, but does not appear in ordinary non-residential loot tables.

The following locations are known to have strong container density for Portable TVs:

Map Residential sub-areas with Portable TV chance Container types
Buried City Buried Properties, Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Plaza Rosa, Piazza Arbusto pharmacies Drawers, filing cabinets, pharmacy filing cabinets
The Blue Gate Village, Raider’s Refuge, Ruined Homestead Residential drawer and cabinet containers
Dam Battlegrounds Ruby Residence Residential drawers and similar containers

The Portable TV can also appear in Stella Montis if Residential-appropriate containers are present, but it is not tied to that map and is generally easier to acquire in larger, less contested Residential zones like Buried City or The Blue Gate.

The Portable TV is treated as a Rare Residential loot item | Image credit: Embark Studios (via YouTube/@TroubleChute Basics)

How to secure a Portable TV

Step 1: Queue into a map with large Residential coverage, such as Buried City or The Blue Gate. In Buried City, aim for the southern housing clusters around the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Buried Properties, Plaza Rosa, and the pharmacies at Piazza Arbusto and Plaza Rosa.

Step 2: Once in a Residential area, prioritize interior spaces that contain drawer units and filing cabinets. Fully open each container, checking all drawers rather than only the top level, since the Portable TV can spawn in any of these Residential container instances.

Step 3: When a Portable TV drops, pick it up and immediately place it into your safe pocket if you have one available. As with the tapes, death before extraction will remove the item from a normal inventory slot.

Step 4: Extract from the map. The quest requires that you successfully leave the instance with the Portable TV. Simply having looted it without extraction does not satisfy Apollo’s objective.

Because Portable TVs share their loot table with other Rare Residential items, runs may occasionally end without a drop even when searching efficiently. However, Residential-dense regions such as the southern Buried City districts, The Blue Gate’s Village and Raider’s Refuge, and Dam Battlegrounds’ Ruby Residence offer multiple qualifying containers within short walking distance, which keeps the expected search time manageable.

You know this step has counted when the Movie Night objective that refers to delivering a Portable TV updates to either a hand-in step or disappears once both items have been turned in.

Prioritize interior spaces that contain drawer units and filing cabinets | Image credit: Embark Studios (via YouTube/@TroubleChute Basics)

Extraction, delivery to Apollo, and quest completion

Movie Night checks both item states only after extraction and interaction with Apollo.

Step 1: After securing each item, make sure it is present either in your normal inventory at extraction or in a safe pocket. If you lose one of the items, only that item’s step must be repeated; the other remains completed if you already extracted with it.

Step 2: Return to Speranza and interact with Apollo. With the Stack of Movie Tapes in your persistent inventory, an option appears to deliver it. With a Portable TV present, a separate delivery option or combined turn-in prompt is available, depending on which objective is currently active.

Step 3: Confirm the hand-ins. Once both items are delivered, Movie Night resolves and Apollo grants 3 Showstoppers, 3 Smoke Grenades, and a Fireworks Box as the fixed reward bundle.

The quest is fully complete when:

  • Apollo no longer lists Movie Night among his available tasks.
  • Your quest log shows Movie Night in a completed state, with no remaining objectives referencing the Cultural Archives, the Stack of Movie Tapes, or the Portable TV.

If either objective line remains after talking to Apollo, confirm that you have extracted with the relevant item and that it is still present in your inventory. If not, repeat the corresponding acquisition step: revisit the Cultural Archives for the Stack of Movie Tapes, or run another Residential loot route for the Portable TV.