How to cite a movie in APA, MLA, or Harvard style

It’s not often that you need to cite a movie, but it’s actually straightforward to do so. Our guide below details how to cite a movie in APA, MLA, or Harvard format.

How to cite a movie automatically

If you want to skip the tedium of writing a movie citation out by hand then we’ve made a citation generator to do it for you. Simply select Film/Movie from the More dropdown below, complete the form, and we’ll put everything in the right order.

How to cite a movie manually

To cite a movie yourself just follow the instructions below. For the 3 most popular styles–APA, MLA 8, and Harvard–this is as follows:

In APA style

You need to locate these details for the movie: director, movie title (duh!), release date, distributor, distributor location, and medium (or format).

• The director can usually be found in the credits for the movie, or on the IMDb or Wikipedia page for the movie.
• The movie title should be pretty straightforward – it’s the name of the movie you’re citing.
• The release date is the date that the movie was first released or published. This can also be found on the IMdb or Wikipedia page.
• The distributor is the company that handled publishing of the movie. For example, the movie Avengers 2: Age of Ultron was distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
• The distributor location is the city or state that the distributor is located in. You can find this by looking up the distributor on Wikipedia.
• The medium is the format that you watched the movie in. This could be something like DVD, internet stream, or cinema.

Then use this template, replacing the colored placeholders with the information you found on the page:

Author last name, Author first name initial. (release date year, release date month and day). Page title [medium]. Distributor location: Distributor.

The final formatted citation should look like this:

In MLA 8 style

You need to locate these details for the movie: director, movie title, release date, and distributor.

• The director can usually be found in the credits for the movie, or on the IMDb or Wikipedia page for the movie.
• The movie title should be pretty straightforward – it’s the name of the movie you’re citing.
• The release date is the date that the movie was first released or published. This can also be found on the IMdb or Wikipedia page.
• The distributor is the company that handled publishing of the movie. For example, the movie Avengers 2: Age of Ultron was distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Then use this template:

Director last name, Director first name. Movie title. Distributor, Year published.

The final formatted citation should look like this:

In Harvard style

Harvard format is very similar to APA. First, locate these details for the movie: director, movie title, release date, distributor, distributor location, and medium (or format).

• The director can usually be found in the credits for the movie, or on the IMDb or Wikipedia page for the movie.
• The movie title should be pretty straightforward – it’s the name of the movie you’re citing.
• The release date is the date that the movie was first released or published. This can also be found on the IMdb or Wikipedia page.
• The distributor is the company that handled publishing of the movie. For example, the movie Avengers 2: Age of Ultron was distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
• The distributor location is the city or state that the distributor is located in. You can find this by looking up the distributor on Wikipedia.
• The medium is the format that you watched the movie in. This could be something like DVD, internet stream, or cinema.

Then use this template:

Author last name, Author first name initial. (release date year) Movie title. Distributor location: Distributor.

The final formatted citation should look like this: