There is no formal or technical distinction: both words describe the same thing, and no institution defines a threshold between them. What differs is register. "Film" carries an art connotation and is the standard British usage, "movie" is the American default and reads as more casual, and people using them as categories are usually signalling taste.
The words are synonyms with different clothes
Both terms are historical accidents of medium. "Film" comes from the physical strip, "movie" from moving pictures, and neither describes anything about a work's content, budget, or ambition. Almost nothing is shot on film now, which has left the word entirely to connotation.
Regional usage explains a lot of the confusion. British English uses "film" as the neutral default and "movie" as the informal option; American English reverses it. So a British speaker calling something a film is being ordinary, while an American doing the same may be making a claim.
What people usually mean
When someone insists on the distinction they are typically reaching for one of three real ideas: that a work is director-driven rather than committee-made, that it is aiming at something beyond entertainment, or that it is not a franchise instalment. Each of those is worth saying and none of them is what the word means.
The useful move is to say the actual thing. "Director-driven", "slow", "not a franchise", "genuinely trying something" all communicate; "film rather than movie" communicates only that you have opinions. It also collapses the moment you notice that plenty of celebrated films are broad entertainment and plenty of self-conscious art fails.
Recommended viewing
Sources and further reading
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FAQs about What Is the Difference Between a Movie and a Film?
Is one word more correct than the other?
Neither, and correctness depends on where you are. British English treats "film" as the neutral default; American English treats "movie" that way. Any claim that one is objectively right is a regional preference presented as a rule, and no institution defines a boundary between them.
What about "cinema"?
Cinema usually means either the building or the art form as a whole rather than a single work, which is why "a cinema" and "a film" are not interchangeable. Used of an individual work it is the most loaded of the three, and almost always a claim about seriousness rather than a description.
So how should I describe what I like?
By the property rather than the label. Slow, funny, formally ambitious, not a franchise, director-driven, under ninety minutes: all of these tell someone something. It is also the level a recommendation engine can act on, whereas "films not movies" narrows nothing at all.