The Six Filmmakers with the Longest Total Filmographies by Runtime

Cinema is often measured in minutes and hours, but some filmmakers treat time itself as the canvas. Their films aren’t just long — their entire filmographies stretch into weeks or even months of screen time. Drawing on IMDb, TMDb, and Wikipedia records, here are the six filmmakers whose directed works collectively make up the longest total runtimes in film history.

Still from Logistics (2012)

6. Ai Weiwei — 9,000+ minutes

Notable Works:

- Beijing 2003 (2003) — 9,000 minutes (150 hours)

- Human Flow (2017) — 140 minutes

- Coronation (2020) — 114 minutes

Better known as a visual artist and activist, Ai Weiwei has used cinema as a vehicle for political and social observation. Beijing 2003 documents ordinary citizens across the capital in exhaustive detail, making it one of the longest single films in history. His later works, like Human Flow (a refugee crisis documentary), show that his interest in time and humanity transcends medium.

5. Gérard Courant — 9,240+ minutes

Notable Works:

- Cinématon (1978–1992) — 9,240 minutes (154 hours)

- Couples (1979) — 90 minutes

- 24 Portraits d’Alain Cavalier (1987) — 120 minutes

Courant is the undisputed master of durational portraiture. His mammoth work Cinématon consists of over 3,000 silent vignettes, each lasting 3 minutes and 25 seconds, covering artists, writers, and cultural figures. Even beyond Cinématon, he has made dozens of shorter experimental pieces, but his claim to the longest total runtime is essentially guaranteed by this single marathon project, which would take more than six days to watch continuously. 

4 & 3. Erika Magnusson & Daniel Andersson — 51,420 minutes

Notable Works:

- Logistics (2012) — 51,420 minutes (857 hours)

This Swedish pair collaborated on a one-off project that instantly made them legendary. Logistics follows the supply chain of a pedometer in real time, from store shelf back to its factory of origin in China. Though they don’t have additional feature-length works listed on IMDb or TMDb, the sheer scale of Logistics makes their combined runtime the largest in cinematic history by far. Watching it would take over a month.

2. Declan Mungovan — 61,320 minutes

Notable Works:

- The Death of Film (2025) — 51,360 minutes (856 hours)

- The Freedom of Uselessness (2025) — +9,960 minutes (+166 hours)

Both of these monumental works were created in collaboration with Samuel Felinton, marking one of the most ambitious partnerships in experimental cinema. The Death of Film alone spans nearly 36 consecutive days, a meditation on the slow disappearance of celluloid and the overwhelming flood of the digital age. Its companion piece, The Freedom of Uselessness, stretches over 166 hours, following two moss balls adrift in still water. As of September 2nd the film is still going on. Together, Mungovan and Felinton push the boundaries of patience, endurance, and what cinema can encompass, giving them one of the longest directorial totals in history.

1. Samuel Felinton — 61,410+ minutes

Notable Works:

- The Death of Film — 51,360 minutes (856 hours)

- The Freedom of Uselessness (2025) — +9,960 minutes (+166 hours)

- Camera Roll — 90 minutes

Felinton’s filmography bridges the monumental and the intimate. His collaborations with Declan Mungovan yielded The Death of Film and The Freedom of Uselessness, two colossal endurance works redefining the limits of cinematic time. In contrast, Camera Roll is a compact 90-minute horror film that captures everyday experience with lyrical precision. This balance of extremes secures Felinton a place among the directors with the longest cumulative runtimes in cinema history.

We don’t usually post content like this, but we couldn’t pass up the chance to spotlight the top two. Both are proud West Virginians. Declan Mungovan hails from Martinsburg, and Samuel Felinton is from Huntington. Their monumental work in experimental cinema deserves recognition, and we wanted to make sure their achievement was highlighted.