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