How to Cite a Movie in MLA 9th Edition

To cite a movie in MLA 9th edition, start the works-cited entry with the italicized film title, add the director after the phrase "Directed by," then the studio or distributor, then the release year: Speed Racer. Directed by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, Warner Brothers, 2008. The in-text citation is (Speed Racer). That covers most films you will ever cite. The decisions that actually cost people marks are elsewhere: whether to lead with the director instead of the title, what to do when you streamed the film on Netflix, and how to point at one moment in a two-hour runtime.

The official MLA 9 rule

MLA 9 does not give films their own template. The MLA Handbook (9th ed., 2021) uses one set of nine core elements for every source, and you fill in the ones that apply:

1. Author
2. Title of source
3. Title of container
4. Other contributors
5. Version
6. Number
7. Publisher
8. Publication date
9. Location

A film uses a handful of them. The bare pattern:

Title of Film. Directed by First Last, Studio or Distributor, Year.

Filled in:

Speed Racer. Directed by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, performances by Emile Hirsch, Nicholas Elia, Susan Sarandon, Ariel Winter, and John Goodman, Warner Brothers, 2008.

The film title is italicized and goes in the "title of source" slot. Director and performers are "other contributors," introduced by a descriptive phrase and separated by commas. The studio is the publisher. The release year is the publication date.

Because MLA 9 kept the container model introduced in MLA 8, an entry you wrote under the eighth edition still works. The ninth edition added explanation and examples rather than changing the element order.

Director first or title first

This is the question the format alone does not answer, and MLA addresses it directly. From the MLA Style Center:

If you are focusing on the director's choices, begin your works-cited-list entry with the director's name. If you are discussing various aspects of the film, such as the story, the actor's performances, and the director's choices, begin your entry with the film's title.

Films are collaborative, so MLA lets the emphasis in your paper decide the emphasis in your entry. A paper on Kubrick's camera movement leads with Kubrick. A paper on a film's plot, its reception, and its lead performance leads with the title.

One rule follows from that choice and is easy to miss: key your in-text citation to whatever begins the entry. If the entry starts with the title, the parenthetical is the shortened italicized title. If the entry starts with the director, the parenthetical is the director's surname. An entry that starts with a title and a parenthetical that names the director will send a reader to an alphabetized list and leave them with nothing to find.

Director-first entries add a role label after the name:

Lucas, George, director. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Twentieth Century Fox, 1977.

In-text: (Lucas 00:47:12).

Worked examples

1. A film you watched on DVD or Blu-ray

My American Cousin. Directed by Sandy Wilson, Twentieth Century Fox, 1985.

In-text, quoting a line: (My American Cousin 00:05:36). In-text, referring to the film generally: (My American Cousin). You can also work the title into your sentence and drop the parenthetical entirely, which reads better when you are discussing the film at length.

2. The same film, when your paper is about the director

Wilson, Sandy, director. My American Cousin. Twentieth Century Fox, 1985.

In-text: (Wilson 00:05:36).

Nothing else changes. You moved one element and added the role label.

3. A film streamed on Netflix

The streaming service is a second container, and its URL is the location:

Bird Box. Bluegrass Films, 2018. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/title/80196789.

In-text: (Bird Box).

Netflix is italicized as a container title. The production company and year stay where they were; the platform is appended after them, not swapped in for them. A reader should be able to see both that Bluegrass Films made it in 2018 and that you watched it on Netflix.

4. A film with a screenwriter worth naming

When a contributor other than the director matters to your argument, name them in the same "other contributors" slot:

Coraline. Directed by Henry Selick, screenplay by Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman, Laika, 2009. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/title/70105599.

In-text: (Coraline).

Each contributor gets its own descriptive phrase. Do not compress two roles into one label.

5. A film on a library streaming platform

University subscriptions such as Kanopy, Swank and Audio Cine are containers too. Give the platform name and the link you actually used:

Shrek the Third. Universal Studios, 2007. Audio Cine Films Inc., https://digitalcampus-swankmp-net.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/audiocine/play/3b336e41babae86e.

In-text: (Shrek the Third 00:25:11).

Proxied library URLs are long and institution-specific. MLA asks for the location you consulted, so the proxied link is defensible, though a marker who is off your campus network cannot open it. If your department prefers the public platform URL, use that and stay consistent.

6. A television episode you streamed

An episode is a title of source inside a series container. The episode title goes in quotation marks, the series is italicized:

Never Have I Ever, season 2, episode 7, Kaling International, Inc., 2021. Netflix, www.netflix.com.

In-text, quoting dialogue: ("... begged" 00:20:26).

7. A recorded television episode with writer and director credits

"The Lion and the Rose." Game of Thrones Season 4, written by George R. R. Martin, directed by Alex Graves, Home Box Office (HBO), 2014.

In-text: ("The Lion and the Rose").

8. A broadcast episode versus a streamed one

The same episode gets a different entry depending on where you watched it. Broadcast:

"The Outspoken King." Empire, Fox, WTTG, Washington, D.C., 14 Jan. 2015.

Streamed:

"The Outspoken King." Empire, season 1, episode 2, Fox, 14 Jan. 2015. Hulu, www.hulu.com/watch/742916ba-486a-42cb-9066-bb592b2b1214.

Cite the version you actually watched. The broadcast entry carries the network, call letters and city; the streaming entry carries the season and episode numbers and the platform.

9. A film you watched in a cinema

There is no location element, because there is no URL and no disc. The entry stops at the year:

Speed Racer. Directed by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, Warner Brothers, 2008.

In-text: (Speed Racer 00:33:10).

A theatrical viewing produces the plainest entry of all. You cannot pause to read a timestamp in a cinema, so if you need one, take it from a later viewing and say nothing about the cinema.

10. A short film or a film hosted on a video platform

When the film lives on YouTube or Vimeo, the platform is the container and the account that posted it is a contributor:

"What If You Stopped Sleeping?" YouTube, uploaded by AsapSCIENCE, 22 Sep. 2013, youtu.be/nNhDkKAvxFk.

In-text: ("What If You Stopped Sleeping?" 00:01:42).

The title sits in quotation marks here because the video is a work inside the YouTube container. A feature film that happens to be streamed on YouTube keeps its italics; a short video made for the platform takes quotation marks. Use the uploader's account name as it appears, and give the date the video was posted rather than the date you watched it.

Special cases

Timestamps, and how to format them

Film has no page numbers, so a timestamp does the work of one. Section 6.28 of the MLA Handbook covers in-text citations for time-based media: pair the title or featured contributor with a timestamp when you point at a specific moment.

Give hours, minutes and seconds as your player displays them, separated by colons:

(Bird Box 00:12:04)

For a range, MLA uses an en dash between the two timestamps, and the second one drops the repeated units:

(Bird Box 01:15:00–30)

That range runs from 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 15 minutes 30 seconds. If the whole work is under an hour, you may drop the hours and give minutes and seconds only.

Two details people get wrong. A timestamp belongs in the in-text citation, not the works-cited entry. And MLA's answer on whether a DVD needs one is the same as for a streamed film: yes, regardless of where you watched it.

Timestamps are also not only for direct quotation. When you paraphrase a specific moment rather than the film as a whole, a timestamp is the thing that lets a reader check you.

Shortening a long film title in the parenthetical

A title-first entry puts the whole title at the head of the works-cited line, but the parenthetical should not repeat a title of eight words. MLA's rule is to shorten a title that runs longer than a noun phrase down to its first noun phrase, dropping an initial article. To the Lighthouse shortens to Lighthouse. Applied to film, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope shortens to Star Wars in the parenthetical.

Two constraints on the shortening. The shortened form has to begin with the word the entry is alphabetized under, so you cannot cut into the middle of the title and start there. And when a title resists being cut into a noun phrase, cut it at the first clause, phrase or mark of punctuation instead.

A film with no individual director

Documentaries, corporate films and some archival material credit an organization instead of a person. Treat the organization as the author if your paper focuses on it, or simply lead with the title and put the organization in the publisher slot.

Foreign-language films

Use the title under which you consulted the film. If you watched it under its original title, that title goes in the entry, italicized, with its own capitalization conventions. Many languages capitalize titles differently from English, and MLA asks you to follow the conventions of the original language rather than forcing English title case. If your paper is for an English-language audience and you want to supply a translation, put it in square brackets after the original.

Restorations, director's cuts and re-releases

Version is one of the nine core elements, so a cut has its own slot. Older films also raise a second question: the disc in your hand was published decades after the film came out, and the release year a reader cares about is usually the original one.

MLA handles this with a supplemental element. Supplemental elements are optional pieces of information you add when they are relevant to your use of the source. The original release date is one of them, and it goes immediately after the title of the source when it applies to the film rather than to the edition you watched:

Spielberg, Steven, director. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 1977. Director's cut, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2007.

That entry says the film is from 1977 and the cut you watched was published in 2007. A reader can place the film in its own decade and still find the exact disc you used. Give the version as the source labels it, and when your argument turns on a scene that exists in only one cut, the version element is carrying real weight.

The film and the book it came from

If you discuss both, they are two entries. Cite the film as a film and the novel as a book, and let your prose make clear which one a given claim comes from. Italicize the novel title as a book title and the film title as a film title; they look identical on the page, so the sentence around them has to carry the distinction.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• The parenthetical does not match the first element. The most common failure, and the only one that actually breaks a reader's ability to find the source. Decide title-first or director-first once, then make every in-text citation point at that word.
• Swapping the studio out for the streaming platform. Netflix did not produce most of what it hosts. The production company and year stay in the first container; the platform is appended as a second container.
• Putting the timestamp in the works-cited entry. It belongs in the parenthetical. The entry describes the whole film.
• Abbreviating "Directed by" to "Dir." That was older MLA practice. MLA 8 and 9 use full descriptive phrases for contributors.
• Quotation marks around a film title. Films are italicized. Quotation marks are for episode titles inside a series.
• Listing every performer. Name the performers your argument depends on, or none. A cast list is not a citation.
• Guessing the studio. Guides disagree about whether to name the production company or the distributor, and the same film appears in published guides with different companies and even different years attached. Take what the copy you watched presents on screen, and use the same choice across your works-cited page.

Quick-reference table