Accidentally made all my movies disappear...please help

I fucked up big time. I have a macbook pro. All the .avi movies I've downloaded are in a folder and I was just organizing some of it when without thinking I replaced the folder with the movies with a completely empty folder and now I can't find the movies anywhere. When I search for them individually nothing comes up but they aren't in the trash. It's as if they completely disappeared. Please help, I've got my collection built up to 20 of my favorite movies and it would be devastating to lose them all.