Some blockbusters may be long, but at least people can reasonably watch it in one sitting. After all, some filmmakers couldn’t care less about box-office numbers, critic reviews, or even the audience’s ability to watch the entire work. Experimental movies challenge boundaries and conventions—a plot, character development, a runtime between 80 and 150 minutes, etc.—to the point where they hardly feel like part of the same medium as their theatrical siblings.
Sometimes, this comes in the form of a multi-part series streamed on Netflix or aired on television over several days. But the following films—these mastodons, these titans—cannot be contained by even a serial format, and only the most dedicated viewer would be willing to see them through to the end. So here are the twenty longest films ever made, ranked from shortest (the word has never been used more loosely) to longest.
20
‘Non c’è nessuna Dark Side (atto uno)’ (2024)
13 Hours and 18 Minutes
Directed by Erik Negro, Non c’è nessuna Dark Side(atto uno, parte due) is an Italian documentary that follows a young critic who has left school and wants to film his own life. Parties, time spent with friends, trips taken through caves—these all get tossed into this avant-garde giant. Shaky shots of sunshine on the water, mountainsides, goats, sound clips of The Grateful Dead jamming out, and Negro’s commentary on life are all thrown together into this very experimental work.
There are apparently two parts to this film, resulting in a total runtime of 13 hours and 18 minutes. Based on the trailer, this doesn’t seem to just be some hermetic artist philosophizing in a room the whole time. Quite the contrary; there are many different faces and settings depicted throughout the movie. Non c’è nessuna Dark Side (atto uno) was shown at the International Film Festival at Rotterdam and Festival Ecrã of Audiovisual Experimentations.
19
‘White House’ (2006)
13 Hours and 27 Minutes
No, not The White House. Directed by David Claerbout, White House takes place simply in a white colonial house that’s similar in style to the famous one in our nation’s capital. This house is also in much worse condition. Here, two men get into an argument that turns violent. By the end of the story, one of the men is murdered. However, the end of the story is not the end of the film; this approximately 10-minute sequence is repeated 73 times.
At least, it’s mostly repeated. It’s technically a different version of the scene every time; the actors performed the same sequence so many times that you’re able to notice the time of day passing with each repetition, from dawn to dusk. Given that time and lighting are the main differences here, perhaps this brief and dark story is supposed to make the viewer reflect on how time can change how we see things and remember small details.
18
‘Bordeaux Piece’ (2004)
13 Hours and 43 Minutes
Another one by David Claerbout, Bordeaux Piece is also a work of fiction. This one is 13 hours and 43 minutes long, so it’s not at all a conventional narrative. It’s not just the narrative’s length, though; it’s also how this narrative is presented. The same 10 minutes (approximately) are played over and over, and they’re not quite the same. They’re the same actors, the same script, etc.—but each of the sections was filmed at different parts of the day.
The film’s first display of these scenes takes place at dawn, and each section afterward is shown later and later throughout the day until it’s almost too dark to see anything in the shot. This doesn’t tell a complete story, either, which is a pretty good reason for the audience to assume that this piece is (to some extent) about the craft of filmmaking. Every ten-minute take on the same story is just a little bit different. There are even times when a microphone is visible or the shadow of the boom is visible. All the more reason to think about how this is about the process of storytelling—not so much the story itself.
17
‘Crude Oil’ (2008)
14 Hours
Wang Bing‘s Crude Oil is a 14-hour film that depicts the workday of people who labor at a remote oil field. It’s in the inner Mongolian part of the Gobi Desert (northwestern China), and this documentary was shot at a high altitude. Crude oil is extracted from the earth, and the workers get themselves dirty over very long workdays. Crude Oil includes everything from someone taking a nap in a break room to a card game to the enormous oil drills themselves.
The oil industry certainly didn’t begin in the 21st century, but it sure has been expanding during it. By showing the grind of the men who work at the source, perhaps the viewer can better understand the isolation of contemporary labor, the stubbornness of oil companies in exploiting workers in the middle of nowhere, and how the workers make the best of their station. Crude Oil was shown at such places as the Hong Kong International Film Festival and the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, where it received a special mention.
16
’15 Hours’ (2017)
15 Hours
Wang Bing strikes again. 15 Hours is exactly as long as you think it is, and its subject is similar to the previous entry. First, it’s another documentary. Specifically, it’s a single-shot documentary filmed inside of a garment processing facility in China. A large one at that; there are 18,000 production units and about 300,000 migrant workers.
Taking an extended, hard, unflinching look at the labor conditions of this clothing factory, the movie makes the viewer consider what it means to work in China (and other places) today. Shots include rows of people sitting at sewing machines, a worker lying down at their bench, a shirtless worker lying down on a makeshift bed between two benches, and more than enough to give audiences a vivid idea of what it’s like to make a living under such poor conditions. This film has been shown at theaters as prestigious as New York City’s Lincoln Center.
15
‘My Human Time’ (2014)
24 hours
In My Human Time, director-producer-star Marc Sallent sits in front of the camera and only speaks after each minute passes. He is placed in front of a big chalkboard, which has a bunch of markings that are difficult to parse out. “AudioSnaps” (the name of the company) is clear enough to read, though, and it’s also on the laptop in front of Sallent. One can imagine how strange it was to sit there for what seems to be the longest unbroken shot ever. Thankfully, he does occasionally walk around (or even leave the frame for a short while).
Every time a minute goes by, an automated ping, not unlike what you’d hear on an airplane. Sallent gives us the time, and that’s pretty much it. This is a promotional video for AudioSnaps, which is apparently no longer in business, and viewers can find it on YouTube in three 8-hour sections. Anyone who wants to follow along would have to begin at 9 AM.
14
‘The Clock’ (2010)
24 hours
Christian Marclay’s The Clock is a montage that seemingly never ends. It does eventually end, but it takes 24 hours to do so. Made of thousands of clips from visual media, The Clock goes the extra mile and makes sure that it counts the seconds with the local time. Though the audience is watching time move through a long series of fictional stories, the fact that it also aligns with the viewers’ clocks stirs up some reflection on, well, time.
Perhaps how we spend that time, too, as this came out when people were watching so much television and film at home (not to mention the proliferation of smartphone users). This phenomenon has only grown more prevalent, of course; likewise, so has this film. As the Museum of Modern Art explains, “Marclay’s assemblage of carefully selected clips takes us on a journey through the past in order to heighten our awareness of an ever-elusive and unfolding present.”
13
’24 Hours of Happy’ (2013)
24 hours
This is a fun one. Pharrell Williams‘ pop hit “Happy” can lift someone’s spirits in the span of just 4 minutes, but what if it just kept going? Well, he put together a 24-hour music video that’s meant to keep you smiling all day and night: 24 Hours of Happy. While the 4-minute video comprises a montage of many different people dancing around LA for just a few seconds at a time, the 24-hour video is cut much differently. It would be kind of absurd to have that many cuts for so much video, so this enormous compilation is made of long takes; each performer gets to dance to the 4-minute version of “Happy” by themselves.
Then the song ends, there’s a brief pause, and the next dancer comes in for their turn. They’re all a joy to watch, and the song is catchy enough to pull off the gimmick. After all, it’s hard to critique such an aggressive and playful barrage of good vibes. The website where this was originally found (24hoursofhappy.com) is apparently not working at the moment, but no matter; it’s still available on YouTube.
12
’24-Hour Psycho’ (1993)
24 hours
Produced and directed by experimental artist Douglas Gordon, 24-Hour Psycho is an extremely slowed-down version of one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most important movies: Psycho. As the title suggests, the original 109-minute movie takes 24 hours to complete. To put it another way, most films move at 24 frames per second while this one goes by at about 2 frames per second. MUBI has a trailer that shows the famous shower scene, which gives you a good sense of how painstakingly long this would feel to watch all the way through.
The suspense from one of the greatest thrillers is replaced with some kind of meditation on…movement, probably. The relationship of the frame with its subject, too, perhaps. First shown at Tramway in Glasgow, 24 Hour Psycho uses an extremely popular film to minimize the confusion. With the plot already known by most viewers and with no sound at all, one focuses not on figuring out the story but on the construction (and medium) of the horror classic itself.
11
‘****’ (1967)
25 hours
**** (otherwise known as Four Stars) immediately declares that even the 10th-longest movie ever created is impossible to watch in one day. The 25-hour runtime makes a little more sense after learning it was written and directed by famed pop artist Andy Warhol at the height of the counter-culture movement.
Warhol actually made a ton of movies, ranging from a two-hour black-and-white superhero movie called Batman Dracula to a bunch of experimental short films to Chelsea Girls, a three-hour commercial success that received mixed reviews. Four Stars sets itself apart from all of them with more than just its length; it was also made so that two 33-minute reels would play over each other at once. It’s said that this extremely avant-garde oddity was only exhibited in full once at the Film Makers’ Cinematheque for a 1967 screening in a New York City basement that no longer exists. A short-story collection on film,Four Stars is unlikely to be shown in full again.
