How to Write a Movie Title in an Essay (and Cite the Film)

Films are legitimate academic sources for media studies, cultural analysis and historical research. Their citations work differently from books and articles, and the three main styles disagree about what goes first.

A note on the examples below: every one is taken from the style guides' own published examples, as reproduced by the Purdue OWL. That is deliberate. A citation example is only useful if the work behind it is real and the details are right, and the safest source for both is the authority setting the rule.

The Basics

A film citation usually carries: who made it (in practice, the director), the release year, the title, an indication that it is a film, and who released it. Styles differ on the order, on whether the title or the person comes first, and on whether you record the specific version you watched.

Quick Reference by Major Style

APA (7th Edition)

Template:

APA's published example, in the form it uses for a film released in another language (the plain template is the same, minus the bracketed translation):

In-text: (Del Toro, 2006)

Note APA's sentence-case title and the square-bracket descriptor. The production company takes the slot a publisher would occupy for a book.

One caution worth stating, since it is the whole point of checking: the OWL's other APA film example gives its director's surname as "Loyd", where the director of the 2008 film in question is Phyllida Lloyd. Even a style guide's examples can carry a typo in a real person's name. Read the credits of the film, or an authority record, before you trust any spelling — including ours.

MLA (9th Edition)

MLA's rule, stated plainly: list films by their title, and include the director, the film studio or distributor, and the release year. Performers go after the director if they are relevant.

In-text: (Speed Racer) — with no page or timestamp, the italicised title stands in for the author.

To emphasise a particular contributor, begin with that person and label the role:

Chicago (Notes-Bibliography)

Chicago records the version you used, not just the film. Its general note model is: director or performer, title, original release year, then the city, studio or distributor and release year of the copy you watched, then the medium.

Note:

Bibliography:

Citing From Streaming Services

If a streaming service is how you reached the work, MLA treats it as a second container, after the first. Its published example for a streamed episode:

Two things follow from that. First, name the service you actually used — do not assume a title is on a particular platform, because streaming rights move between services and between countries, and a reader in another country may not find it there at all. Second, APA's film template has no platform slot: the production company stays, and the platform is not part of the reference.

Citing Specific Scenes or Quotes

For a quotation or a described moment, you need to point at the place in the work, not just the work.

Chicago says how: cite the scene, using the scene title as given on the medium you used, in the note only — not in the bibliography. Where scene titles are not available, Chicago says you cannot cite in this fashion.

Where your style uses a time stamp instead, give the elapsed time from the copy you watched, as a bracketed template:

Read the time off your own copy and record it to the second. Time codes differ between releases, cuts and regions, so a figure copied from somewhere else may point at nothing. Transcribe any dialogue you quote from the film itself rather than from a subtitle file or a fan transcript.

Films in Another Language

APA keeps the original title and adds a translation in square brackets before the descriptor — the Del Toro entry above is APA's own example of exactly that.

MLA begins with the title under which you are discussing the film, and you can gloss the other title in your prose. Follow your style guide's preference for which title leads, and be consistent.

Documentaries and Television

A feature documentary released as a film takes the film format. A documentary series does not: in APA a series is credited to its executive producer, with a [TV series] descriptor and the production companies, as in APA's own example:

Two departures from the OWL's printed version of that example, both deliberate. It prints the date range as "2017-present", which was true when it was written and is not now: the series finished its fifth and final season on 26 May 2023, so an open-ended range would misdate a real work. APA's rule is to close the range once a series has ended, and that is the second reason to check a date rather than copy it. We have also punctuated the entry as APA requires — an ampersand before the second producer, semicolons between all three production companies — where the OWL prints a bare comma in both places.

A narrator is not the author of a series. If the narration is what you are analysing, name the narrator in your prose and cite the series.

Films With No Individual Director Credit

Some films — early cinema, certain animated and collaborative productions — have no single director credit, or credit a supervising director over several sequence directors. MLA's default already handles this, because it lists films by title; in APA, put the production company in the author position and treat it as a group author.

Check the credits of the release you are using before you conclude that there is no director. Many films that are casually described as having none do in fact carry a supervising-director credit.

Italics and Formatting

Film titles are italicised in all three styles. APA uses sentence case for the title; MLA and Chicago use title case. Episode titles within a series take quotation marks (see the TV show citation guide).

Sources

• Purdue Online Writing Lab. Reference list: Audiovisual media (APA 7th edition). https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_audiovisual_media.html (read 22 September 2026)
• Purdue Online Writing Lab. MLA works cited: Other common sources. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_other_common_sources.html (read 22 September 2026)
• Purdue Online Writing Lab. Audiovisual recordings and other multimedia (Chicago 17th edition). https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/audiovisual_recordings_and_other_multimedia.html (read 22 September 2026)
• Wikidata. Phyllida Lloyd (Q237696). https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q237696 (read 22 September 2026) — used to check the surname spelling noted above.
• Wikidata. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Q30634329). https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q30634329 (read 22 September 2026) — start date 17 March 2017, end date 26 May 2023, five seasons; used to close the date range noted above.

The APA, MLA and Chicago manuals themselves remain the authority; apastyle.apa.org blocks automated requests, so the formats above were read from the Purdue OWL's reproductions of each style's published examples.