100 best movies based on true stories

IMDb user rating: 7.7

Year: 2014

Director: James Marsh

“The Theory of Everything,” tells the story of physicist Stephen Hawking—who had Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative neuromuscular condition—from the point of view of his wife, Jane. The film is based on her memoir and mostly sticks to the facts. One deviation from real life: Stephen and Jane didn’t meet until after he was already diagnosed.

Year: 2007

Director: David Fincher

Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal star in this historical thriller about the Zodiac serial killer. The film shows how the killer detailed his murders in letters to newspapers and police but was never caught. Critics applauded the film’s attention to historic detail.

IMDb user rating: 7.7

Year: 2002

Director: Spike Jonze

Director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman teamed up after the success of “Being John Malkovich” to create “Adaptation,” a film based on Kaufman’s experience with writer’s block as he tried to write a screenplay adapted from Susan Orlean’s non-fiction book “The Orchid Thief.” The movie added some elements of fiction, including the creation of a twin brother for Kaufman. The film also portrayed a romance between Orleans and John Laroche—the subject of “The Orchid Thief”—that never happened.

IMDb user rating: 7.7

Year: 2009

Director: John Lee Hancock

The film is based on the true story of NFL star Michael Oher, a homeless black teenager taken in by a well-off white family in Tennessee before professionally succeeding in football. This box office hit was praised by the Academy—Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for Best Actress—but some critics didn’t like how the film portrayed race. Oher said the film had a negative impact on his career.

IMDb user rating: 7.7

Year: 2011

Director: Jonathan Levine

Will Reiser wrote the screenplay for “50/50” based on his own experience after he was diagnosed with cancer at 25. Reiser said he survived the disease with the help of real-life friends like Seth Rogen, who also co-produced and starred in the movie opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who played the Reiser character.

IMDb user rating: 7.7

Year: 2012

Director: Ben Affleck

In “Argo,” the CIA creates a fake movie production company to extract six Americans during the Iran revolution in 1979. While this part of the story is true—and is based on a Wired article by Joshuah Bearman and a memoir by former CIA operative Antonio Mendez—the film downplays Canada’s involvement in the rescue. Alan Arkin’s character was fictional, and the escape from Iran—which involved a myriad of complications at the airport in the film—was not as dramatic as depicted.

IMDb user rating: 7.7

Year: 2010

Director: David Fincher

Director David Fincher paired up with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing”), who adapted the film from “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal,” written by Ben Mezrich. The film takes a deeper look behind the turmoil surrounding the creation of Facebook. It focuses on founder Mark Zuckerberg, who some say is not as angry in real life as he seems in the film. What the film did get right: the Winklevoss brothers did work with and sue Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin was Zuckerberg’s closest friend, and Sean Parker did play a critical advisement role.

IMDb user rating: 7.7

Year: 2006

Director: Zack Snyder

While there is no way to know if real-life Spartans all had six-packs, the film portrays the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. when King Leonidas of Sparta (Gerard Butler) and 300 of his warriors—along with at least 1,100 Boeotians—fought against the entire Persian army. Snyder claims it is historically accurate, but some critics disagree.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 1964

Director: Cy Endfield

“Zulu” tells the story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879 between 150 British soldiers who fought against 3,000 to 4,000 (the exact number varies) Zulu fighters in South Africa. The film is a re-creation of a true event, but some feel it exaggerates the importance of an unnecessary battle.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2017

Directors: Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman

“Loving Vincent” depicts the life and death of Vincent van Gogh by transforming van Gogh’s works into a painted animation brought to life with added (famous) voices. The plot begins one year after Vincent van Gogh’s suicide, as a postman delivers the artist’s last letter to his brother, Theo.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2018

Director: Spike Lee

Director Spike Lee shows how Ron Stallworth, the first black police officer in Colorado Springs, Colorado, infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan during an undercover investigation in the late 1970s. Stallworth (John David Washington) sends his white colleague (Adam Driver) to pose as him during in-person meetings while Stallworth himself fools KKK director David Duke (Topher Grace) on the phone. While most of the film is accurate, Stallworth said no bombings took place during his investigation. His love interest in the movie also didn’t exist in real life.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2014

Directors: Matthew Warchus

In 1984, a group of British LGBT activists worked together to raise money for striking miners and their families during a gay pride march in London. The activists identified with the miners against what they felt were repressive, abusive tactics by Margaret Thatcher.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 1962

Directors: Ken Annakin, Darryl F. Zanuck, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Gerd Oswald

This epic war film depicts the events of the D-Day landing during World War II on June 6, 1944 in Normandy. The black-and-white movie features an ensemble cast including John Wayne, Richard Burton, and Henry Fonda. Some events are fictionalized, but the crux of the story is true.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2005

Director: Roger Donaldson

This film tells the story of Burt Munro, an aging New Zealander who rebuilt a 1920 Indian Twin Scout motorcycle that helped him set a world record for land speed at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967. The real Munro had children, though they were not mentioned in the film.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2013

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

“The Wind Rises” is a controversial animated biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane, which Japan used during Pearl Harbor in World War II. The film shows Horikoshi’s skill and dedication as an engineer.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 1999

Director: Joe Johnston

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Homer H. Hickam Jr. in this drama based on the lives of four men in Coalwood, West Virginia, who experimented with creating their own rockets. In real life, Hickam became a NASA engineer and wrote “Rocket Boys.”

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 1987

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

The life of Puyi, the last emperor of China, is depicted in this biographical drama. In 1908, 3-year-old Puyi, became the Lord of Ten Thousand Years. The film follows the emperor though his life, including his childhood and imprisonment by Russia after World War II.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2004

Director: Walter Salles

Based on the memoir of a 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara, “The Motorcycle Diaries” shows Guevara's life in the years before he became known as Che, the internationally famous Marxist leader. The story follows a young Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado as they travel across South America.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 1973

Director: Sidney Lumet

Al Pacino portrays Frank Serpico, an officer with the New York Police Department. Serpico uncovers and exposes police corruption in the 1960s and 1970s. Like in the movie, his real-life efforts led to the creation of the Knapp Commission, which investigated the NYPD.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 1971

Director: William Friedkin

This fictionalized crime thriller is based on a work of nonfiction with the same name that tells the story of two NYPD detectives. The real life partners—Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso—were portrayed as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Buddy “Cloudy” Russo. The film follows the detectives as they search for a French heroin smuggler named Alain Charnier (whose name in real life was Jean Jehan).

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 1987

Director: Steven Spielberg

The film tells the story of Jamie “Jim” Graham (Christian Bale), a spoiled young boy from a wealthy British family in Shanghai who becomes a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp during World War II and is later separated from his parents. The film follows Jim as he tries to survive on his own.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 1992

Director: Michael Mann

Set in 1757, “The Last of the Mohicans” depicts the French and Indian War in the Ohio River Valley. The film, written and directed by Michael Mann, is based on an 1826 novel by the same name. One historian applauded Mann’s attention to detail in costumes and liked his use of French and Indian language, but she criticized the historical accuracy of some of the dialogue.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2016

Director: Theodore Melfi

“Hidden Figures” shines a light on three black female mathematicians—Katherine Goble (later Johnson), Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan—working at NASA during a time when racial segregation and workplace sexism were still the norm. The film is based on a nonfiction book by Margot Lee Shetterly—who consulted on the film—and centers on the story of Katherine Goble (Taraji P. Henson) who confirmed, by hand, the formula that helped John Glenn make the first human trip around the Earth. Shetterly said that while the main plot of the movie is true, there were far more people who worked on the space projects than depicted in the movie.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2000

Director: Boaz Yakin

Denzel Washington portrays Herman Boone, a black coach who led the first integrated football team at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1971. Washington portrayed Boone as an inspirational character, but some say the real-life Boone wasn’t quite so nice or the cause of the team’s success. The movie also claims that they only played white teams, but many other high school teams were integrated.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2008

Director: Clint Eastwood

The film was based on the events surrounding the 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop Murders in Mira Loma, California. Angelina Jolie plays Christine Collins, whose 9-year-old son goes missing. Collins is institutionalized by authorities when she declares that a boy claiming to be her son is an imposter. Screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski, a former journalist, pieced the story together from newspaper files and historical records from City Hall.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 1997

Director: Mike Newell

Donnie Brasco follows the true story behind a real-life FBI agent whose name was Joseph Pistone. Like in the film, Brasco goes undercover to infiltrate the Bonanno crime family.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2015

Director: Adam McKay

“The Big Short” tells the backstory of how subprime mortgages led to the 2008 housing catastrophe—and subsequent financial crisis—and how signs of an impending crisis were ignored. The film is based on the nonfiction book of the same title written by Michael Lewis. While most names have been changed, the film stays true to the book’s description of the main characters and the timeline of events. What is true to life: Michael Burry (Christian Bale) was a stock market investor who went shoeless and listened to trash metal.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2010

Director: David O. Russell

Mark Wahlberg stars as Micky Ward, a boxer from Lowell, Massachusetts, who turned his losing streak around and won the WBU light welterweight title in 2000. Ward’s family—a chain-smoking mother, seven sisters, and a crack-addicted half brother—are major forces in the film. Ward said the movie actually toned down the group.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2007

Director: Ridley Scott

Denzel Washington plays Frank Lucas, a drug lord from the 1970s. While the film portrayed Lucas descending into the jungles of Southeast Asia during Vietnam and smuggling drugs inside soldiers’ caskets, these events never actually happened.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 2013

Director: Paul Greengrass

The film depicts the actions of Capt. Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), whose cargo ship was taken hostage by Somali pirates. It is based on Phillips’ memoir, “A Captain’s Duty.” Two things the movie fictionalized: Phillips and the crew did not trick one of the pirates with broken glass on the ground, and he did not feel sorry for any of the captors. Crew members aboard the real-life ship allege Phillips wasn’t the hero he made himself out to be.

IMDb user rating: 7.8

Year: 1997

Director: James Cameron

Director James Cameron tells the story of the sinking of the Titanic. While the character or Margaret Brown (Kathy Bates)—who tried to get unfilled lifeboats to take on more people—is based on a real-life passenger, Jack and Rose (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) were Hollywood creations. Another fact: the violinist continued to play as the boat sank.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1984

Director: Roland Joffé

This biographical drama is based on the experiences of an American journalist, Sydney Schanberg, and his Cambodian fixer, Dith Pran, during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in 1984. The film stays true to real-life events, including the aftermath in Neak Loeung, a town the Americans accidentally bombed in 1973.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1983

Director: Philip Kaufman

The film tells the story of the Mercury Seven, the first astronauts of the United States space program. While the film—which is based on Tom Wolfe’s book of the same name—leaves out some controversy surrounding Virgil “Gus” Grissom, it sticks to historical facts about the space race.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1973

Director: Terrence Malick

While the movie and character names are fictional, it is based on the murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his accomplice Caril Ann Fugate in 1958. Fugate, at 14 years old, didn’t murder anyone, but accompanied Starkweather as he killed 11 people in the Badlands of Wyoming and Nebraska.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1989

Director: Jim Sheridan

Daniel-Day Lewis plays Christy Brown, an Irish man born with cerebral palsy who could only control his left foot. Brown grew up poor and mostly paralyzed, but he became a writer and painter. The film left out the not-so-happy ending with Brown’s real-life wife and nurse, Mary Carr.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1951

Director: John Huston

Katharine Hepburn plays Rosie, a missionary who chooses to stay in the Congo as the First World War starts. She receives her supplies from Charlie Allnutt (Humphrey Bogart) and his boat the “African Queen.” In real life, the boat was originally named the “Livingston.”

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1967

Director: Arthur Penn

The film follows the true story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who went on a crime spree that ended after a six-month manhunt. The film accurately portrays Bonnie as a waitress in Texas who runs off with Clyde—already familiar with prison—and that the two become famous after a major shootout with police. In reality, it’s not clear just how involved Bonnie was with the actual shooting, or if she and Clyde were more than travel companions.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1960

Director: Stanley Kubrick

This epic historical drama is based on life story of Spartacus, the leader of a slave revolt who died in 71 B.C., and the events of the Third Servile War. The film follows Spartacus as he leads thousands of former slaves as they defeat Roman attacks with early guerrilla warfare.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1989

Director: Edward Zwick

Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman play soldiers in the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Army—a unit made of free black volunteers—during the Civil War who are commanded by a white officer, Col. Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick). The film tells the story of the unit’s efforts at the assault on Fort Wagner.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 2006

Director: Clint Eastwood

The film tells the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers. It is based on two nonfiction books. While some characters are fictional, the overall battle, as well as some commanders, are based on actual people and events.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1999

Director: Michael Mann

“The Insider” is based on the true story between Jeffrey Wigand, a research scientist at a major tobacco company, and a producer at CBS, Lowell Bergman, who helped Wigand speak out on the harmful effects of nicotine. The film is adapted from Marie Brenner’s Vanity Fair article “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1994

Director: Tim Burton

Director Tim Burton casts Johnny Depp as filmmaker Ed Wood. Burton portrayed Wood, who was an alcoholic and a womanizer, as a more sympathetic character in the film than he was in real life.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 2015

Director: F. Gary Gray

This biopic tells the story of N.W.A., the controversial gangsta rap group that started in the 1980s whose members included Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube. The latter two were producers as was Eazy-E’s widow. Ice Cube is played by his actual son, O’Shea Jackson Jr. While some details are changed in the film, one fact is true: Dr. Dre did get Eazy-E to bail him out of jail, and Dre later produced a track for Eazy-E to return the favor.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 2005

Director: James Mangold

“Walk the Line” tells the story behind one of country music’s most famous love stories: Johnny Cash and June Carter. Johnny Cash’s daughter Kathy objected to how her mother—Cash’s first wife, who he had four children with—was portrayed in the film. Kathy Cash said her mother was supportive of the musician until he started using drugs and stopped coming home.

IMDb user rating: 7.9

Year: 1987

Director: Brian De Palma

Set during Prohibition in 1930, this drama is based on the story of crime boss Al Capone—who kept the liquor flowing in Chicago—and Eliot Ness, a Prohibition agent assigned to stop Capone. The film was based on a book co-authored by Ness with the same name.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 1972

Director: Werner Herzog

Herzog’s film is a fictionalized work based on Lope de Aguirre, a Spanish adventurer in the 16th century who sought El Dorado (the city of gold), and the failed expedition of the conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro. While the events in history are true, Herzog created the characters that appear in the movie.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 1925

Director: Sergei M. Eisenstein

This silent film is based on a mutiny that occurred in 1905 on the Russian battleship Potemkin. In the film, the crew revolted after they were given maggot-filled meat. However, many parts of the movie plot were embellished.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 1953

Director(s): Billy Wilder

“Stalag 17” is a comedy war film set in a German prisoner-of-war camp. It was adapted from a based-on-real-life Broadway play written by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski—Air Force sergeants who were prisoners in Stalag 17B in Austria.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 2004

Director: Alejandro Amenábar

This heart-wrenching tale is based on the real-life battle of Ramón Sampedro, who fought for 30 years to get the right to end his life after an accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. The film shows various friends and family administering Sampedro cyanide poison and the life-ending event that he filmed.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 1970

Director: Franklin J. Schaffner

This epic biopic is based on the life of Gen. George S. Patton during World War II. Some of the military props in the film are inaccurate, and it also shows Patton scolding a soldier—who had malaria—for being a coward and only begrudgingly apologizing when he found out the soldier was sick. In real life, Patton felt bad about his comments.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 1976

Director: Alan J. Pakula

Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman star as the journalistic duo of Woodward and Bernstein, The Washington Post reporters who exposed President Richard Nixon with their coverage of the Watergate scandal. The film is based on the nonfiction book of the same name written by Woodward and Bernstein. While the movie pays close attention to factual details, the scene where Bernstein lures a receptionist away from her boss (Ned Beatty) with a fake phone call never happened.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 2007

Director: Julian Schnabel

The film tells the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French Elle magazine who suffered a stroke in 1995. He was in a coma for 20 days after which he woke up completely paralyzed with a condition known as locked-in syndrome. The film is based on the process and content of Bauby’s memoir, which he dictated by blinking his left eye to a transcriber to convey letters.

Some differences between real-life and the film are that Bauby did not write about a bevy of women surrounding him after his stroke. His real girlfriend also didn’t call to say she couldn’t visit, and she actually spent time with him in the hospital.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 1973

Director: Franklin J. Schaffner

Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Henri Charriere, “Papillon” depicts the life of a prisoner (who was framed for murder) and sentenced to the French Guiana penal colony of Devil’s Island. He then plots his escape with a fellow convict. Some doubt the authenticity of Charriere’s story. However, the author stuck by his story until his death in 1973.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 1991

Director: Oliver Stone

Director Oliver Stone mixes historical facts with conspiracy theories in his film about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The official story is that JFK was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, who acted alone. One point of fiction in the film: David Ferrie, a real person, confesses his involvement, but he maintained his innocence in real life.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 2005

Director: Ron Howard

Director Ron Howard shows the story of Irish-American heavyweight boxing champion James L. Braddock. The Chicago Tribune claimed Howard glorified Braddock and inaccurately portrayed Braddock’s opponent, boxer Max Baer, as an “evil, unredeemable man.” Baer also didn’t train that much, making the upset by Braddock less impressive in real life, the critic noted.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 2008

Director: Wilson Yip

This martial arts biopic is modeled on Ip Man, a Wing Chun master and teacher to Bruce Lee. The film is only loosely based on the martial artist, with some fights and life events embellished for the big screen.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 1975

Director: Sidney Lumet

A real-life failed bank robbery in 1972 by John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturale inspired this crime drama. In the film, Al Pacino portrays Sonny Wortzik (the Wojtowicz character) as they attempt to rob the First Brooklyn Savings Bank (in real life, it was a Chase Manhattan Bank) that ends in a 14-hour hostage crisis.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 2013

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée

Matthew McConaughey portrays Ron Woodroof, an AIDS patient in the mid-1980s. Woodruff starts the Dallas Buyers Club to distribute treatments not yet approved by the FDA to fellow HIV/AIDS victims. While much of the story is true to life, some things were fictionalized. For example, Woodruff never actually competed in rodeos, and the characters played by Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto weren’t real people.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 2006

Director: Gabriele Muccino

Will Smith portrays Chris Gardner, an entrepreneur and single father who tries to raise his son—played by Smith’s real son Jaden—while homeless. An interview with Gardner appeared on “20/20” before the film, based on his memoir, hit theaters.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 2017

Director: Christopher Nolan

This war film is based on the true story of the evacuation of Allied soldiers at the French port of Dunkirk during World War II and how civilian boats had to rescue soldiers from the beach, as the water was too shallow to accommodate Royal Navy ships. In the film, actual WWII-era ships were used, but all the characters are fictionalized.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 2010

Director: Tom Hooper

Colin Firth plays King George VI, who must give radio broadcasts, as he struggles to overcome stuttering. Some criticize the film for avoiding to point out that George VI once supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s concessions to the Nazis. The film also portrays a contentious beginning relationship between speech teacher Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) and the King, but they became fast friends in real life.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 2015

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

“The Revenant” tells the story of Hugh Glass, a 19th-century fur trapper who trudged through 1,500 miles of wilderness to exact revenge on the men who abandoned him after a grizzly bear attack. In the film, Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), is shown dragging himself and eating raw meat killed by wolves. Based on the book, “The Oregon Trail,” these events actually happened. In real life, no violence occurred once Glass reached the end of his nine-month journey.

IMDb user rating: 8

Year: 2014

Director: Morten Tyldum

Based on the biography “Alan Turing, The Enigma,” Benedict Cumberbatch portrays the father of computer science in “The Imitation Game.” In real life, and in the movie, Turing helped break the code of the German military's Enigma machine. Since not much is known about the personal life of Turing—a closeted gay man—much of the film is embellished. However, Turing was forced to become chemically castrated because his homosexual activity was illegal, and he committed suicide with cyanide.

What wasn’t true? Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) didn’t fight with her parents about cracking codes for the government, and she never completed a crossword puzzle test to get the job.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 1982

Director: Werner Herzog

The film is based on Carlos Fitzcarrald, an Irish-American who became a rubber baron dead set on transporting a heavy steamship over the mountains in Peru. The movie changes the real-life character’s name to Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, also known as Fitzcarraldo. Much like the natives the real Fitzcarraldo exploited in real life, the film crew experienced hardships while making the film.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 1966

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo

“The Battle of Algiers” is based on historical events surrounding the fight against French colonial rule in Algeria. The film uses fictionalized characters, but some actors were real veterans.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2007

Director: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud

Director Marianne Satrapi tells the story of her rebellious youth in in this animated feature. The film, which depicts a girl who wants to become an Islamic prophet, is based on Satrapi’s eponymous autobiographical graphic novel.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2003

Director: Bong Joon-ho

“Memories of Murder” depicts the events surrounding the first serial murders in South Korea, starting in 1986. The detective characters are fictional, but like in real life, the film’s murderer was never caught.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 1993

Director: Jim Sheridan

The film is based on the true story of the Guildford Four, a group who were wrongly convicted of bombings by the IRA that killed five people and injured 65 in 1974. Daniel Day-Lewis portrays Gerry Conlon, who wrote the autobiography the film was based on. The film fictionalized some characters, and some of its historical accuracy have been called into question.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2009

Director: Adam Elliot

This animated comedy is based on the real-life relationship between the director and his pen pal of 20 years. The film tells the story of a young Australian girl who writes to an obese man living with Asperger's. While there are true aspects of life in the characters, they are fictionalized.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2016

Director: Garth Davis

“Lion” tells the true story of Saroo Brierley, who was separated from his family in India. He gets lost trying to find his way home, ending up in an orphanage and later adopted by an Australian family. Decades later, he uses Google Earth to track down his family. What isn’t true is the love affair with Lucy (Rooney Mara), whose real character didn’t exist.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 1969

Director: George Roy Hill

Robert Redford and Paul Newman play Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, train robbers from the early 1900s who try to escape to South America after a failed robbery. One thing not true in the film: the character of Native American tracker Lord Baltimore didn’t exist.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 1982

Director: Richard Attenborough

Ben Kingsley stars as nonviolent activist Mahatma Gandhi—the father of modern India—in this epic biopic that attempts to condense 50 years in the Indian leader’s life into three hours. Much of the film showed actual events from Gandhi’s life, but critics didn’t like the villainous portrayal of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was a staunch supporter of Muslim rights in South Asia.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2004

Director: Terry George

“Hotel Rwanda” is based on the story of Paul Rusesabagina and his wife Tatiana who sheltered refuges in the Hotel des Mille Collines during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Rusesabagina was awarded the Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize in 2011, but some critics say he may not have had as much to do with saving Rwandans as the film leads viewers to believe.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2016

Director: Mel Gibson

This war drama tells the story of Private Desmond Doss, an American pacifist combat medic, during World War II. The film is based on the documentary “The Conscientious Objector.” Doss refused to carry a weapon in the war, but saved around 75 men (he says 50, his battalion says 100) after they came under gunfire at Hacksaw Ridge in Okinawa. Some characters are fictionalized and the cliff in the film isn’t the actual Hacksaw Ridge.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2015

Director: Tom McCarthy

The film is based on The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, a set of investigative journalists. The reporters exposed the behavior of Catholic priests who had molested children and the subsequent coverup by the Boston archdiocese to protect their priests. While much of the film is accurate, a former Globe reporter said the movie underscored just how much other reporters at the paper had already reported on the priest scandal.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2013

Director: Ron Howard

“Rush” tells the story of two Formula One race car drivers—British James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Austrian Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl). While the film makes it seem like the two were adversaries, they were actually friends in real life. The opening scene where Hunt hooks up with a nurse after a jealous husband punches him never happened, but he was indeed a ladies man.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2007

Director: Sean Penn

The film is based by the eponymous nonfiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It chronicles the journey of Christopher McCandless in the Alaskan Wilderness. McCandless was found dead in an abandoned bus north of Denali National Park, but toxic mushrooms—what killed him in the film—may not have been the cause of his demise.

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2013

Director: Steve McQueen

“12 Years a Slave” tells the tragic story of Solomon Northup, a black free man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the 1841. The film is based on Northup’s 1853 memoir of the same name. The gritty screenplay stays true to the book, depicting it accurately in the film. One heart wrenching, but believable, scene is fiction: when Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) asks Northup to kill her.  

IMDb user rating: 8.1

Year: 2002

Director: Steven Spielberg

Director Steven Spielberg shows the story of Frank Abagnale, a teenage con man who served almost four years in prison after getting caught for posing as a Pan Am pilot (he wanted free tickets but never flew) and cashing forged checks. According to his autobiography, Abagnale also posed as a doctor, sociology professor, and an assistant district attorney. Though these characters are depicted in the film, some of his outlandish cons are unverified.  

IMDb user rating: 8.2

Year: 1966

Director(s): Andrei Tarkovsky

This black-and-white art-house film is based on Andrei Rublev, a 14th-century Russian painter and monk. “Andrei Rublev” presents a bleak but artistic story of Russia during the artist’s time.

IMDb user rating: 8.2

Year: 1928

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

This 1928 French silent film depicts the 1431 heresy trial of Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc), a peasant who led battles during the Hundred Years’ War and claimed she’d been giving a mission by God to save France. Like in real life, the film shows Joan confessing, recanting that confession, and being burned at the stake.

IMDb user rating: 8.2

Year: 1976

Director: Moustapha Akkad

This historical drama tells the story of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Honoring Islamic rules about the depiction of the prophet, the film does not show his face or project his voice.

IMDb user rating: 8.2

Year: 1980

Director: David Lynch

Director David Lynch based his film on Joseph Merrick, a man with a severe facial deformity that led many to believe he lacked intelligence. He is referred to as John in the film because, like in real life, his doctor accidentally called him by the wrong name in his memoir. Actor Bradley Cooper, who plays the Elephant Man in the Broadway play of the same name, credits the film with inspiring him to become an actor.

IMDb user rating: 8.2

Year: 1963

Director: John Sturges

This 1963 epic World War II film shows the escape of Allied prisoners of war from a German camp. The film is based on a nonfiction book by Paul Brickhill of the same name, which tells his account of the mass escape from Stalag Luft III in Poland. While the film includes Americans in the escape, this didn’t happen in real life.

IMDb user rating: 8.2

Year: 1980

Director(s): Martin Scorsese

Robert De Niro plays Jake LaMotta, an Italian middleweight boxing champion who fought from 1949 to 1951. The film is based on LaMotta’s 1970 autobiography. In the film, LaMotta’s brother Joey (Joe Pesci) is actually a combination of two people from the boxer’s life.

IMDb user rating: 8.2

Year: 2004

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel

“Downfall” is based on historical accounts of the final 10 days of Adolf Hitler’s rule in Nazi Germany. Some of the film’s scenes are so famous, they have become parodies known as Hitler rants.

IMDb user rating: 8.2

Year: 1995

Director: Martin Scorsese

Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese join forces again in this epic crime drama. While the names have been changed, some characters are based on real people. Robert De Niro’s character is based on Frank Rosenthal, who ran casinos in Las Vegas.

IMDb user rating: 8.2

Year: 1995

Director: Michael Mann

“Heat” is based on the story of Chicago police officer Chuck Adamson and his pursuit of thief Neil McCauley. It is known for being the first film where Al Pacino and Robert De Niro appeared on screen together.

IMDb user rating: 8.2

Year: 2013

Director: Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Wall Street financier Jordan Belfort, who wrote the book that the movie is based on. The film mostly sticks to events that actually happened, including Belfort’s rise to success in a penny stock house. However, Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) is a fictional character who is a composite of real people. The names of Belfort’s wives were also changed.

IMDb user rating: 8.3

Year: 1962

Director: David Lean

“Lawrence of Arabia” is based on the life of T. E. Lawrence, a British officer who led the Arab revolt against the Turks during World War I. Most of the film’s characters were also based on real people. However, the timeline is questionable and some attack scenes were fictionalized.

IMDb user rating: 8.3

Year: 1984

Director: Milos Forman

“Amadeus” is a fictional film based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, including his relationship with Italian composer Antonio Salieri. Critics claim the movie plays fast and loose with historical facts, claiming the rivalry depicted between Mozart and Salieri may have been more rumor than reality.

IMDb user rating: 8.4

Year: 1957

Director: Stanley Kubrick

This 1957 anti-war film set in World War I is based on Humphrey Cobb’s novel of the same name. It accurately begins on the French front in 1916. Some characters are fictional—including Col. Dax (Kirk Douglas), but the story is based on real events during the war.

IMDb user rating: 8.4

Year: 1984

Director: Sergio Leone

This crime drama, another one starring Robert De Niro, is based on the lives of David “Noodles” Aaronson and Maximilian “Max” Bercovicz. The film tells the story of how these two Jewish immigrants, and best friends, became prominent Jewish gangsters in the New York mob scene.

IMDb user rating: 8.4

Year: 1995

Director: Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson directs and stars in this film based on the real-life Sir William Wallace, a 13th-century warrior who led the Scottish resistance. Historians have pointed out that since Wallace was a lowland Scot, he probably wouldn’t have worn a kilt.

IMDb user rating: 8.5

Year: 1988

Director: Isao Takahata

This 1988 animated film, based on a semi-autobiographical short story by Akiyuki Nosaka, tells the story of Japanese cities that were firebombed during World War II. The film shows events from the point of view of two fictionalized orphans trying to survive in the wreckage as the war comes to an end.

IMDb user rating: 8.5

Year: 1988

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore

Director Giuseppe Tornatore based his movie off a real-life person named Mimmo Pintacuda. Referred to as Alfredo in the film, the projectionist teaches Salvatore (a young Tornatore) how to operate a film projector in a small Sicilian village. The Italian film won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

IMDb user rating: 8.5

Year: 2002

Director: Roman Polanski

“The Pianist,” based on a memoir by the same name, tells the story of a Polish-Jewish pianist and composer named Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Holocaust survivor. The film follows Szpilman during Nazi-occupied Poland, as he avoids getting sent to Auschwitz and deals with the guilt of surviving.

IMDb user rating: 8.5

Year: 2011

Directors: Olivier Nakache, Éric Toledano

The film was inspired by the true story of an unlikely friendship between Philippe Pozzo di Borgo—who became a quadriplegic after a paragliding accident—and his Algerian-born caregiver Abdel Sellou. The directors discovered the story after they saw the two men in a documentary. Di Borgo was an adviser to the film.

IMDb user rating: 8.7

Year: 1990

Director: Martin Scorsese

Director Martin Scorsese co-wrote “Goodfellas” with Nicholas Pileggi, author of “Wiseguy,” a work of nonfiction about mob associate and informant Henry Hill. Hill’s name stayed the same, but the names of some real-life gangsters were altered for the film.

IMDb user rating: 8.9

Year: 1993

Director: Steven Spielberg

Liam Neeson stars as Oskar Schindler, a German businessman credited with saving more than 1,000 Jewish lives when he employed them in his factory, in this epic historical drama. A historian, however, claims that the real-life Schindler had nothing to do with the list and may have helped Nazis invade Poland.