There are two feature films known to have been shot exclusively in the constructed language Esperanto. Both were shot in the 1960s, and both were long thought lost until recent restorations.

The first was the French production Angoroj (Agonies) in 1964, directed by Atelier Mahé. It runs approximately one hour, just shy of feature length, and its story involves murder. After a restoration and home video release (in the PAL format) in Switzerland, the film appears to be once again unavailable. Very little detailed information about Angoroj is available, except that the cast included some proficient Esperantists, including Raymond Schwartz, who was associated with the Esperanto Cabaret in Paris.

The second feature was the 1965 Americann production Incubus, a low-budget horror film directed by the creator of the television series The Outer Limits. Admired for its stark artistry, Esperantists generally cringe at the actors' poor pronunciation.

A 1987 horror film by Serbian director Goran Markovic titled Vec vidjeno apparently includes both Esperanto and Serbo-Croatian dialogue. Esperanto also makes an appearance in Andrew Niccol's critically admired 1997 science fiction drama Gattaca.

Earlier examples of Esperanto in film consist mainly of old newsreel and documentary footage, some dating back as early as 1911, when the seventh international Esperanto conference was held in Antwerp, Belgium. The funeral of Esperanto creator L. L. Zamenhof in 1917 was filmed. And according some sources, French cinema pioneer Leon Ernest Gaumont wanted to make a film about Esperanto to showcase a sync sound process he had developed, but the project was curtailed by the onset of World War I.

The next direct link between Esperanto and film involves the 1940 film The Great Dictator, written, directed and starring Charlie Chaplin: the signs in the shop windows of the ghettoized Jewish population in the film are written in Esperanto. The 1931 Esperanto novel Mr Tot Aĉetas Mil Okulojn, written by Polish author Jean Forge (aka Jean Fethke), was adapted by Fritz Lang as The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse in 1960. (The film was in German, not Esperanto.) Forge also directed films of his own, at least two of which are known to have been Esperanto productions, Morgau Ni Komencos la Vivon (1934) and Verda Stelo Super Varsovio (1959). It is unknown if either film survives.

In the british sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf (1988 - ?), the signs all the corridors are all written in both english and esperanto, the characters occasionally speak a little esperanto too.