menu

How to Cite a Movie in APA Format


Although American Psychological Association style has different specifications for citing a movie in text versus in the references list, both citations require the last names of the director and the producer as well as the year the film was released. APA requires specific formatting for each type of citation.

In-Text Citation

For a parenthetical citation, use the director's and the producer’s last names and separate the names with an ampersand symbol (&). Follow the names with a comma, and then list the year that the movie was released. For example: (Spielberg & Lucas, 1981).

If you are including an in-text citation as part of a sentence, rather than in parentheses at the end of a line, include the director’s and producer’s last names, separated with “and.” Then include the year the movie was released in parentheses. For example: According to Spielberg and Lucas (1981), in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark . . .”

When including a direct quote from the movie, also include the scene number or scene name.

References List

In APA format, include the bibliographic information on the references list in alphabetical order according to the director’s last name. The basic guidelines to follow for movie references include the following: Director’s last name, first initial. (Director), & producer's last name, first initial. (Producer). (Year film was made). Title of film [Medium]. Country of origin: Studio. Note the use of brackets instead of parentheses for the medium. If the director and producer are the same person, include that information in the parentheses after the director's name.

For example: Hitchcock, A. (Producer & Director). (1960). Psycho [Film]. United States: Universal Studios.

If you are unable to locate certain bibliographic information about a film, utilize IMDB.com or a similar website to help find the data.

References
About the Author

This article was written by the Pen & the Pad team, copy edited and fact checked through a multi-point auditing system, in efforts to ensure our readers only receive the best information. To submit your questions or ideas, or to simply learn more about Pen & the Pad, contact us

Photo Credits
  • Comstock Images/Stockbyte/Getty Images
https://penandthepad.com/cite-movie-apa-format-6591642.html
penandthepad.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-51
28461
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:2T6YTW7UJDHRVKAILXE55IECK2Q7KDKK
<urn:uuid:dfd072dd-eb74-4c58-b71c-02ee16670389>
2017-12-11T22:44:05Z
23.227.10.118
text/html
sha1:L5VQMQRRDZUQAY4HCHGGKFFSDG5E2FE7
<urn:uuid:16abef6f-baf9-4e96-ad24-79ce57cb354e>
https://penandthepad.com/cite-movie-apa-format-6591642.html
length
response
<urn:uuid:67c25ffa-0923-401d-8147-2e74f0561f19>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-67-195-241.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-51
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for December 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf