Longest film made

According to movie database IMDb, Logistics (Sweden, 2012) is the longest film ever made, with a running time of 857 hours (which is 35 days 17 hours). In real time, the movie documents the journey of a small plastic electronic pedometer in reverse chronology, from its sale in a shop in Stockholm, Sweden, back to the factory in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, where it was manufactured. The movie was directed by Swedish artists Erika Magnusson and Daniel Andersson, who have explained that the experimental film “is about Time and Consumption. It brings to the fore what is often forgotten in our digital, ostensibly fast-paced world: the slow, physical freight transportation that underpins our economic reality.”

Logistics was initially screened from 1 December 2012 to 6 January 2013 at Stockholm’s House of Culture, and at the same time at the Uppsala City Library. It was given a world premiere during the Fringe Film and Video Festival in Shenzhen in December 2014. The movie was subsequently screened from 21 June to 12 July 2015 at the “Holy Independent Space” art festival in Dresden, Germany, and in 2018 at the Media of Cooperation Collaborative Research Centre at the University of Siegen, Germany. As of January 2025, Logistics is also available to be streamed online.

In all, the movie traces the pedometer’s journey from Stockholm to Insjön and Gothenburg (all in Sweden), then on to Bremerhaven (Germany), Rotterdam (Netherlands), the Spanish cities of Algeciras and Málaga and finally to the Bao’an district of Shenzhen in China. Logistics was funded by Swedish organizations Innovativ Kultur foundation and Kulturbryggan (“The Cultural Bridge”).

Modern technology makes it theoretically possible for anyone to create endless footage using only a phone or laptop. But in terms of a movie that has been publicly screened, and enjoyed a global premiere, no other production has yet outrun Logistics.

The longest movie to win an Oscar is the documentary feature O.J.: Made in America (USA, 2016), which has a run-time of 467 minutes, or 7 hours 47 minutes, and won the Best Documentary Feature award for its creators Ezra Edelman and Caroline Waterlow (both USA) at the 89th Academy Awards ceremony held on 26 February 2017. The feature film recounts the rise and fall of American football star O J Simpson and, in the words of its producers, also “reveals a collection of indelible, unshakeable, and haunting truths about America, and about ourselves”.

cover image: Rinson Chory | Unsplash

Notable Mainstream Movie Epics

The history of cinema is studded with extravagantly long movies, many of which have become established classics. Fritz Lang’s visionary sci-fi epic Metropolis (Germany, 1927) was more than 2 hr 30 min long at its premiere (although it was drastically cut for the US market, much to Lang’s chagrin). Abel Gance’s Napoléon (France, 1927) combines visual effects that were ground-breaking for their time, such as rapid cutting between shots, split-screen images and montage. And, in keeping with its subject, its running time was suitably grandiose – reportedly more than 9 hr when originally screened, and a still-impressive 5-hr-plus in its most familiar form.

During Hollywood’s golden age, movies drawing on biblical stories or the ancient world tended to be epic on every level – from set design and the hordes of extras they employed (sometimes numbering thousands) to their duration. Some were so long that they included an intermission for the audiences to take a breather. Spectacular productions such as The Ten Commandments (USA, 1956), Cleopatra (USA, 1963) and Ben-Hur (USA, 1959) each lasted more than 3 hr 30 min. The latter became famous for its exhilarating chariot race, a scene that took five weeks to shoot and incorporated jaw-dropping stunts:

The movies’ lengthy running times were partly to accommodate the intricacies of the plots, but also to reflect how seriously these stories, with their enduring themes, should be taken.

A few years later, director Francis Ford Coppola’s acclaimed The Godfather Part II (1974) enjoyed a 3-hr-plus duration, in keeping with the slow-release tale of a Mafia family’s evolution down the generations. Tracing the ongoing corruption and decline of crime syndicate head Michael Corleone, alongside flashbacks depicting how his father, Vito Corleone (the Don played by Marlon Brando in the original Godfather film), became a criminal in 1920s New York City, it could easily have been made as two separate movies.

The longest movie to have won an Oscar is the documentary feature O J: Made in America (USA, 2016), which has a running time of 467 min, or 7 hr 47 min. The film, which recounts the rise and fall of American football star O J Simpson, picked up the Best Documentary Feature award for its creators Ezra Edelman and Caroline Waterlow (both USA) at the 89th Academy Awards ceremony on 26 February 2017.

Going Underground: Long-Form Experimental Films

But all of the above were mainstream cinematic releases. Underground art-house movies have stretched boundaries in all sorts of ways, not least running times. Premier Pop Artist Andy Warhol seemingly believed in setting the camera up and letting it more or less direct itself. Sleep (USA, 1964) is exactly that – looped footage of the film’s sole actor, John Giorno, fast asleep.

But its 3-hr-plus duration was dwarfed by that of Warhol’s Empire (USA, 1965) – unbroken black-and-white footage of the top half of the Empire State Building, projected in slow motion, giving a total length of around 8 hr. Warhol later commented that he thought people should break off every now and return to the film, refreshing their perspective, rather than attempt to watch all of it in one sitting. Click play below, and you can decide for yourself!

Were Empire not challenging enough, Warhol’s **** (aka Four Stars; USA, 1967) ran a full 25 hr. For good measure, he intended the reels to be run simultaneously from two separate projectors, with their respective soundtracks overlapping. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the movie was screened only once, on 15–16 December 1967.

And it’s difficult to imagine people queuing around the block to see The Longest Most Meaningless Movie in the World (UK/France, 1968), which combined snippets of existing footage to create a 48-hr behemoth.

Logistics: The Journey from Factory Floor to High-Street Store

Even among all these mega-length movies, however, one film stands out. And although it isn’t a mainstream release, neither is it freeform in the manner of many underground flicks.

Logistics was directed by artists Erika Magnusson and Daniel Andersson and funded by Swedish organizations Innovativ Kultur foundation and Kulturbryggan (“The Cultural Bridge”). In short, it’s an “arthouse” project, not intended for a mass audience. But unlike many experimental films, Logistics has a serious and thought-provoking theme.

Magnusson and Andersson had been thinking about all the consumer goods with which we fill our lives – the “clutter” that we take for granted – and started wondering about the long and complicated process that brings them to us from the places where they were made. “We were fascinated by the fact that the sourcing of just about every object in our surroundings involves almost inconceivable global logistics,” they explain on their website logisticsartproject.com. “Would doing the same freight journey as the products enable us to understand more about the world and the global economy?”

By way of an answer, they embarked on a voyage to trace the steps that one particular item (a pedometer) had taken to reach them from its point of origin. They filmed the entire trip, and back in Sweden it was screened in real time.

The duo’s trek begins with a nighttime drive by lorry to central Sweden, winding along dark, deserted roads. Next comes a ride on a freight train from the countryside to Gothenburg on the country’s west coast. Thereafter, the pair board a huge container ship, and from a high vantage point their camera looks down on the crate-packed deck below, as the vessel moves slowly out of port and on to the open sea. After a four-week voyage, including multiple stop-offs for cargo transfers, they dock in Shenzhen, a port in Guangdong province in south-east China. The last leg of the marathon trip comprises a drive to the gates of the factory where the pedometer was manufactured, in the Bao’an district.

Intrigued? You can watch the whole movie yourself here, in 107 parts (each of which is around 8 hr long):

A Radical New Perspective on How Goods Reach Us

According to Magnusson and Andersson, Logistics “is about Time and Consumption. It brings to the fore what is often forgotten in our digital, ostensibly fast-paced world: the slow, physical freight transportation that underpins our economic reality.” As with Warhol’s Empire, it’s not a film that you would (or could) watch in one sitting. In fact, Logistics is less a film in the conventional sense, and more an experience – something to be lived through.

Watching 875 hr unfold in real time can’t help but impact on the viewer’s perception of time and how it passes. Unlike most films, the “narrative” unfurls at a glacial pace. There’s something mesmeric in the relentless journey of the lorry ploughing through the Swedish night, a procession of white road markings and electric lights emerging against the black background. Sometimes during the sea voyage to Shenzhen, the waters are calm and blue; at other times, the skies are grey and white crests top the waves. Unhurried weather cycles play out before the camera’s fixed point of view.

On-screen changes, however small, have a proportionately greater impact. A shift in the weather, the glimpse of a new object on the horizon, or the camera slowing to a stop as it reaches a destination – all grab the attention that little bit more, given the repetitive nature of the movie overall.

We live in a world of instant results; we order something online and expect it to be delivered quickly – ideally, on the same day. Logistics is a reminder of the complex and time-consuming operations that underpin the supply chains that we rely on for so much, but know so little about.

Top 5 longest movies to have won the Best Picture Academy Award

1. Gone with the Wind (USA, 1939), directed by Victor Fleming: 233 min
2. Lawrence of Arabia (UK/USA, 1962), directed by David Lean: 227 min
3. Ben-Hur (USA, 1959), directed by William Wyler: 223 min
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (NZ/DEU/USA, 2003), directed by Peter Jackson: 201 min
5. The Godfather Part II (USA, 1974), directed by Francis Ford Coppola: 200 min