How to Cite a Movie in APA 7th Edition

To cite a movie in APA 7th edition, credit the director as the author, give the release year, italicize the title in sentence case, add the label [Film] in square brackets, and end with the production company: Forman, M. (Director). (1975). One flew over the cuckoo's nest [Film]. United Artists. The in-text citation is (Forman, 1975). That one pattern, from Section 10.12 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.), covers almost every film you will ever cite. The complications live in the edges: Netflix originals, foreign titles, quoting a line of dialogue, and the difference between a movie and a TV episode. This guide works through each one.

The official APA 7 rule

The reference for a film has four elements, in this order:

Format:

Director, D. D. (Director). (Year). Title of film [Film]. Production Company.

Each element has one non-obvious rule attached.

Author. The director is the author of a film, and the parenthetical label (Director) follows the name. Screenwriters, producers, and actors do not appear in the reference, however central they were to the movie. If two people share directing credit, list both with an ampersand, each followed by no label, and put (Directors) after the second name.

Date. The year of theatrical release, alone. Films take a year only; full dates are for episodes, videos, and other works released on a specific day.

Title. Italic, in sentence case: capitalize the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. One flew over the cuckoo's nest, with lowercase f, o, and c, is correct in the reference even though the poster shouts every word. The bracketed description [Film] follows the title, outside the italics.

Source. The production company that made the film. When several companies share the credit, separate them with semicolons: Selznick International Pictures; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Where you watched the movie is irrelevant to this element. APA says explicitly that you do not specify the format or platform you used, so a film seen in a theater, on Blu-ray, and on a streaming app all produce the same reference. The one case where a streamer's name appears is when the streamer is the production company, covered in example 3 below.

In text, cite the director's surname and the year: parenthetical (Forman, 1975) or narrative, Forman (1975). A direct quotation adds a timestamp in place of a page number, which the special cases section covers.

Where to find the four elements

The formatting is the easy half; the hunt for the data is where papers stall at 1 a.m. Each element has a reliable home.

The director is in the opening or closing credits under "Directed by," and on the film's IMDb page as the first entry under the title. Ignore the names above the title on the poster; those are actors and producers with billing clauses in their contracts.

The year is the theatrical release year, printed in the copyright line at the very end of the credits and listed beside the title on IMDb and in library catalogs. The year your streaming service added the film is a trap; more on that in the FAQ.

The production company is the trickiest. The logos that play before the film mix production companies with distributors, and the poster's billing block crams both into small print. The dependable source is the "Production companies" list under Company Credits on IMDb, or the film's entry in a library database. When that list is long, the manual's own examples suggest the companies with the primary production credit; two or three names is normal, seven is a sign you are copying the financing chain.

None of this belongs in the reference as a citation of IMDb itself. You are using the database the way you would use a book's copyright page: as the place the facts are printed.

Worked examples

1. A standard studio film

Forman, M. (Director). (1975). One flew over the cuckoo's nest [Film]. United Artists.

• Parenthetical: (Forman, 1975)
• Narrative: Forman (1975) frames the ward as an institution of control.

This is the Publication Manual's own film example, and it is the template for the ordinary case: one director, one company, English title.

2. Multiple production companies

Fleming, V. (Director). (1939). Gone with the wind [Film]. Selznick International Pictures; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

• Parenthetical: (Fleming, 1939)

Semicolons separate the companies, in the order the film credits them. Do not shorten the list to the most famous name; both companies belong in the reference.

3. A streaming original

Orlowski, J. (Director). (2017). Chasing coral [Film]. Netflix.

• Parenthetical: (Orlowski, 2017)

Netflix appears here because Netflix is the production company of record for this documentary. The reference identifies who made the film. It never says where you streamed it, so The Godfather watched on Netflix still lists Paramount Pictures, and a Netflix original watched on a DVD would still list Netflix. Students overwhelmingly get this backwards, appending whatever app they watched the film on.

4. A film in another language

Del Toro, G. (Director). (2006). El laberinto del fauno [Pan's labyrinth] [Film]. Warner Bros. Pictures.

• Parenthetical: (Del Toro, 2006)

Give the title in its original language, then the English translation in square brackets, then [Film]. Two bracketed chunks in a row looks odd and is correct. The original title is what appears in the film's own credits and in databases, so a reader can find it; the translation is a courtesy. Watching the film dubbed or subtitled changes nothing in the reference.

5. A special edition or director's cut

Jackson, P. (Director). (2001). The lord of the rings: The fellowship of the ring [Film; four-disc special extended ed. on DVD]. WingNut Films; The Saul Zaentz Company.

• Parenthetical: (Jackson, 2001)

Expand the bracket to name the version only when your citation depends on it. If the scene you analyze exists only in the extended cut, or you quote a commentary track, the reader needs the version to check your claim. If you are citing the film as released, plain [Film] is right even if you happened to watch the extended edition.

6. A TV series (for contrast)

Simon, D., Colesberry, R. F., & Kostroff Noble, N. (Executive Producers). (2002-2008). The wire [TV series]. Blown Deadline Productions; HBO.

• Parenthetical: (Simon et al., 2002-2008)

Television swaps the director for the executive producers and the single year for the range of years the series ran. A series still in production ends the range with "present": (2017-present). Cite the whole series only when your point spans it; a claim about one episode cites the episode.

7. A TV series episode

Barris, K. (Writer & Director). (2017, January 11). Lemons (Season 3, Episode 12) [TV series episode]. In K. Barris, J. Groff, A. Anderson, E. B. Dobbins, L. Fishburne, & H. Sugland (Executive Producers), Black-ish. Wilmore Films; Artists First; Cinema Gypsy Productions; ABC Studios.

• Parenthetical: (Barris, 2017)

The episode is the most intricate audiovisual reference in APA. The writer and director of the episode lead; the air date is a full date; the episode title stays roman (not italic) with season and episode numbers in parentheses; then "In" introduces the executive producers and the italicized series title, the way a chapter reference introduces an edited book. If you cite book chapters in APA, the logic will feel familiar: the episode is the chapter, the series is the book.

Special cases

Quoting a line of dialogue

A direct quotation needs a locator, and a film has no page numbers. APA's answer (Section 8.28) is a timestamp for the moment the quotation begins:

"Which one of you nuts has got any guts?" (Forman, 1975, 1:22:10)

Three rules keep the timestamp clean. Give only the starting time, never a range. Separate hours, minutes, and seconds with colons and no spaces. Drop the hours when the film has not reached one: (Orlowski, 2017, 42:16). Player apps disagree by a second or two depending on the cut and the platform; that is fine, since the timestamp is a finding aid, and any honest starting point serves.

A paraphrase of a specific scene

A paraphrase requires only (Forman, 1975). Adding a timestamp anyway is allowed and kind: a reader hunting one scene in a two-hour film will thank you. The manual encourages a locator for paraphrases of long works when it would help the reader; it never requires one.

No director credited

Some corporate, promotional, and archival films credit no director. APA's principle for audiovisual works is to credit the person in the primary creative role, so fall back to a producer, with the role in parentheses: Producer, P. P. (Producer). If no individual is credited at all, the manual offers no film-specific rule. The defensible move is to start the reference with the title, the way an APA source with no author works, and stay consistent across your paper.

Two films by the same director in the same year

Distinguish them with lowercase letters after the year, assigned alphabetically by title: (Nolan, 2020a) and (Nolan, 2020b). The letters appear in the references too, and the entries sort by title. The full sorting rules are in our guide to APA reference list order.

A film that lives on YouTube

A feature film uploaded to YouTube, licensed or otherwise, is cited as a YouTube video: uploader as author, [Video] instead of [Film], YouTube as the site, and the URL. The platform matters there because the uploader and the URL are how the reader finds that copy. The full pattern, with screen-name rules, is in our YouTube citation guide.

A trailer or a clip

The manual has no trailer example. The defensible choice: cite the clip where you watched it, as an online video with a description that says what it is, for example Dune: Part two [Film trailer] with the platform and URL. Whatever bracket you choose, use it consistently, and do not cite a trailer as if it were the film.

Citing several films in one sentence

A claim that spans movies, common in film studies and media psychology papers, cites them all in one parenthetical, separated by semicolons and ordered alphabetically by director, exactly as multiple written sources would be: (Fleming, 1939; Forman, 1975; Jackson, 2001). Each film still gets its own full reference entry. Do not merge them into one entry, and do not order them by release date; alphabetical order by the first element of the reference is the rule for parentheticals of every source type.

The movie title inside your sentence

In your prose, a film title is italic and in title case: "In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Forman (1975) stages..." Sentence case is only for the reference list. Writing sentence case in your running text, or reference-list capitals on your title page, mixes the two registers the manual keeps separate.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• Naming the platform instead of the producer. "Paramount Pictures" is the source for The Godfather whether you streamed it, rented it, or own the disc. Write the streamer only when it produced the film. The reference answers who made this, never where you watched it.
• Citing an actor or screenwriter as the author. Search results and IMDb pages lead with the cast, so De Niro ends up where Scorsese belongs. The director owns the author slot; check the directing credit before you copy a name.
• Title Case In The Reference. Posters and streaming menus capitalize every word, and students copy them. The reference wants Gone with the wind. Retype the title; pasting it is how the capitals sneak in.
• A full date on a film. (1975, November 19) belongs to a TV episode or an online video. Films take the year alone. If you find yourself typing a month, check which format you are actually citing.
• Citing the IMDb page. IMDb is where you look up the director and year; it is a website about the film. Cite the film itself. An IMDb reference in a paper about the movie tells your reader you watched a database.
• Dropping the [Film] bracket. Without it, the reference reads as a book. The bracketed description is a required element, and it also carries the version when the version matters (example 5).

Quick-reference table