Was The Dark Knight Rises a little too long for you? Do you find yourself consulting that peebreak app before going to see one of these three-hour Hollywood blockbusters. Pffft. That’s nothing. Here are some of the actual longest movies ever made, with videos you can watch right now.
Resan (The Journey), a 873 min. (14 hour 33 min.) film by Peter Watkins, released in 1987, featuring people asked about nuclear weapons and military spending.
Out 1: Noli me tangere, a 773 min. (12 h 53 min.) long 1971 film by Jacques Rivette. This experimental film is based on Balzac’s L’Histoire des Treize, and divided into eight episodes. Out-1 is telling a complex story about thirteen conspirators, two dueling theatre groups, and features more than 4 hours of improvisation by the best French New Wave actors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzlLbWpgm-E
How Yukong Moved the Mountains, a 763. min. (12 h 43 min.) long French documentary film directed by Joris Ivens, released in 1976. It documents the last days of the Cultural Revolution in China, focusing on ordinary people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6McbfQeIsC4
Evolution of a Filipino Family (Ebolusyon ng isang pamilyang Pilipino), a 2004 black-and-white Filipino film directed by Lav Diaz. It is 593 minutes (9 hr 53 min.) long, and was shot for more than ten years, and covers the period between 1971 and 1987, including Marcos’ dictatorship and the time of the People’s Revolution in 1986.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLDC3tf6V94
Shoah, a 503 (US version) to 613 min. (French version) French documentary film directed by Claude Lanzmann, released in 1985. It presents interviews with Holocaust survivors, witnesses and German perpetrators, and visits to Holocaust sites in Poland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV6mJ6T1oU0
Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, a 551 minute (9h 11min.) long Chinese documentary film by Wang Bing, released in 2003. It tells the story of the rapid decline of Shenyang’s industrial district named Tiexi in three parts (“Rust”, “Remnants” and “Rails”), filmed between 1999 and 2001.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVk-Qyf35cM
The Photo-Drama of Creation, an eight-hour Christian film (in four parts), produced by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania (led by Charles Taze Russell, also known as Pastor Russell), produced between 1912 and 1914. It was the first film ever featuring synchronized sound, moving film and magic lantern slides. The film (available here) presents the beliefs of the Society, including the idea that seven days of Creation equal 49,000 years.
Hitler: A Film from Germany (also known as Our Hitler), a Franco-British-German experimental film directed by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, 1977. The 442-minute (7h 22 min) film is divided into four parts, and tells about Hitler’s cult of personality in Nazi propaganda, pre-Nazi spiritual, cultural and national heritage, the Holocaust and its ideology from Himmer’s point of view, and satire on how former Nazis made profit from the Nazi tourism industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LnG5DwaBh8
