Aluminum Electrolytics have about 10x-15x the ESR of Film capacitors. Film capacitors have lower internal power loss for the same amount of ripple current. Some applications use large banks of aluminums just to handle the ripple current. Film capacitors are most economical where high ripple and low capacitance is needed.
Now film manufacturers have developed thinner films and have improved segmentation techniques used on the metallization which has helped immensely in the improvement of such capacitors. Using non-gas impregnated designs, the voltage ranges between 600 VDC and 1200 VDC can be more economically covered by film capacitors rather than electrolytic.
Standard DC Link Film capacitors are available up to 1500 Vdc. Both film and aluminum electrolytic capacitors are highly reliable when manufactured properly and applied correctly. Lifetime for film and aluminum electrolytic can be estimated from life models. Film capacitors are self healing, some are protected.
Metallized film capacitors are made of two metallized films with plastic film as the dielectric. A very thin (~ 0.03 μm ) vacuum-deposited aluminum metallization is applied to one or both sides to serve as electrodes.
Especially for applications with high current pulse loads or high AC loads in electrical systems, heavy-duty film capacitors, here called "power capacitors", are available with dielectric ratings of several kilovolts. But the manufacture of film capacitors does have a critical dependency on the materials supply chain.
The dissipation factor for film/foil capacitors is lower than for metallized film capacitors, due to lower contact resistance to the foil electrode compared to the metallized film electrode. The dissipation factor of film capacitors is frequency-, temperature- and time-dependent.