<p>As an emerging packaging material, films have been widely used in the chemical, food, and pharmaceutical industries. Effective packaging films must possess good mechanical properties, processability, and be non-toxic. The use of polymer films are single functionality, poor biodegradability, and insufficient performance during packaging. To address these challenges and explore future directions, this work conducts a systematic visualization analysis of research on intelligent films. Using CiteSpace software, this work analyzed the research articles from Web of Science database over the past three decades. The keywords co-occurrence, keyword emergence, keywords clustering, keywords timeline, co-occurrence of disciplines, and the collaborative network graph of country or region were investigated. The results indicate a dramatic increase in publications on packaging film materials, with intelligent packaging films garnering growing research interest. The main findings are summarized as follows: (1) Approximately 662 keyword nodes and 1200 connections were obtained, with a network density of 0.0055. The modularity coefficient indicated that the clustering network achieved is significant. A silhouette value of 0.8449 confirmed a reliable clustering; (2) The predominant materials for films are chitosan, polyvinyl alcohol, and sodium alginate, the functional additives for intelligent applications primarily focus on natural dyes (e.g., anthocyanins) and essential oils; (3) The applications of intelligent films include antibacterial activity, freshness detection, and pH sensing. Furthermore, this work analyzes the selection criteria for food packaging film and the research progress in antibacterial and intelligent indicator functionalization. Overall, this study provides valuable perspectives and suggestions for the development of multi - functional and intelligent films.</p>