Best Movies Based On A True Story

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List of the most popular films based on a true story

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How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

Sidney Young is a down-on-his-luck journalist. Thanks to a stint involving a pig and a glitzy awards ceremony, Sidney turns his fortunes around, attracting the attention of Clayton Harding, editor of New York-based glossy magazine 'Sharps', and landing the holy grail of journalism jobs. The Brit jets off to the Big Apple and moves from one blunder to the next.

The Haunted Place

Raina was inherited a hotel in Semarang by her father. He and his younger brother eventually managed the hotel. However, there was one unnumbered room that his father asked him not to disturb. But now, what was in the room was starting to disturb the visitors.

Chernobyl: Abyss

The aftermath of a shocking explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station made hundreds of people sacrifice their lives to clean up the site of the catastrophe and to successfully prevent an even bigger disaster that could have turned a large part of the European continent into an uninhabitable exclusion zone. This is their story.

The Dentist

Dr. Feinstone has everything, a beautiful wife and a successful career in dentistry; but when he discovers his wife's affair, he realizes that behind every clean, white surface lies the stench of decay.

Life on the Line

A crew of men who do the high-wire work of fixing the electrical grid are hit by a sudden deadly storm.

Lizzie

Massachusetts, 1892. An unmarried woman of 32 and a social outcast, Lizzie lives a claustrophobic life under her father's cold and domineering control. When Bridget Sullivan, a young maid, comes to work for the family, Lizzie finds a sympathetic, kindred spirit, and a secret intimacy soon blossoms into a wicked plan.

Radium Girls

Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on their health.

The People vs. Larry Flynt

Larry Flynt is the hedonistically obnoxious, but indomitable, publisher of Hustler magazine. The film recounts his struggle to make an honest living publishing his girlie magazine and how it changes into a battle to protect the freedom of speech for all people.

Hamburger Hill

The men of Bravo Company are facing a battle that's all uphill… up Hamburger Hill. Fourteen war-weary soldiers are battling for a mud-covered mound of earth so named because it chews up soldiers like chopped meat. They are fighting for their country, their fellow soldiers and their lives. War is hell, but this is worse. Hamburger Hill tells it the way it was, the way it really was. It's a raw, gritty and totally unrelenting dramatic depiction of one of the fiercest battles of America's bloodiest war. This happened. Hamburger Hill - war at its worst, men at their best.

Woman of the Hour

A drama based on the true story of the time that a serial killer competed on and won a date on the popular TV game show The Dating Game. The killer, Rodney Alcala, was in the midst of a killing spree in 1978 when he brazenly took part in the show.

Wilde

The story of Oscar Wilde, genius, poet, playwright and the First Modern Man. The self-realisation of his homosexuality caused Wilde enormous torment as he juggled marriage, fatherhood and responsibility with his obsessive love for Lord Alfred Douglas.

Denial

Acclaimed writer and historian Deborah E. Lipstadt must battle for historical truth to prove the Holocaust actually occurred when David Irving, a renowned denier, sues her for libel.

Twelve O'Clock High

In the early days of daylight bombing raids over Germany, General Frank Savage must take command of a 'hard luck' bomber group. Much of the story deals with his struggle to whip his group into a disciplined fighting unit in spite of heavy losses, and withering attacks by German fighters over their targets.

The Railway Man

A victim from World War II's "Death Railway" sets out to find those responsible for his torture. A true story.

The Experiment

Das Experiment is a shocking psycho thriller about the potential for brutality that humans hide. Even more shocking is the fact that it’s based on an actual occurrence — a 1971 psychological experiment at Stanford University that was aborted prematurely when the experimenters lost control.

Clouds

Young musician Zach Sobiech discovers his cancer has spread, leaving him just a few months to live. With limited time, he follows his dream and makes an album, unaware that it will soon be a viral music phenomenon.

A Prayer Before Dawn

The amazing true story of Billy Moore, an English boxer incarcerated in Thailand’s most notorious prison. Thrown into a world of drugs and violence, he finds his best chance to escape is to fight his way out in prison Muay Thai tournaments.

Walking Tall

Ex-wrestler and Tennessee Sheriff Buford Pusser walks tall and carries a big stick as he tussles with county-wide corruption and moonshining thugs.

Love Exposure

The story of a teenage boy named Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an "up-skirt" photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with the guilt that's a legacy of his Catholic upbringing.

Lenny

The story of acerbic 1960s comic Lenny Bruce, whose groundbreaking, no-holds-barred style and social commentary was often deemed by the establishment as too obscene for the public.

Fisherman's Friends

Ten fishermen from Cornwall are signed by Universal Records and achieve a top ten hit with their debut album of Sea Shanties. Based on the true-life story of Cornish folk band, Fisherman's Friends.

Colette

After marrying a successful Parisian writer known commonly as Willy, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is transplanted from her childhood home in rural France to the intellectual and artistic splendor of Paris. Soon after, Willy convinces Colette to ghostwrite for him. She pens a semi-autobiographical novel about a witty and brazen country girl named Claudine, sparking a bestseller and a cultural sensation. After its success, Colette and Willy become the talk of Paris and their adventures inspire additional Claudine novels.

Libertate

Sibiu, December 1989. In the chaos and panic generated by the protests of the crowd against the authorities, a unit of the militia becomes the target of a violent assault that escalates into a bloody confrontation between soldiers, militiamen, security agents, and civilians. Trying to escape the siege, Captain Viorel of the militia is captured and accused of being a terrorist.

The Seventh Continent

Chronicles three years of a middle class family seemingly caught up in their daily routines, only troubled by minor incidents. Behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence however, they are actually planning something sinister.

Heartburn

Rachel is a food writer at a New York magazine who meets Washington columnist Mark at a wedding and ends up falling in love with him despite her reservations about marriage. They buy a house, have a daughter, and Rachel thinks they are living happily ever after until she discovers that Mark is having an affair while she is waddling around with a second pregnancy.

Hoodlum

In 1934, the second most lucrative business in New York City was running 'the numbers'. When Madam Queen—the powerful woman who runs the scam in Harlem—is arrested, Ellsworth 'Bumpy' Johnson takes over the business and must resist an invasion from a merciless mobster.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The true story of Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind.

Down by Love

A man, a woman. A prison director, his inmate. An impossible love, a true story.

I Saw the Light

Singer and songwriter Hank Williams rises to fame in the 1940s, but alcohol abuse and infidelity take a toll on his career and marriage to fellow musician Audrey Mae Williams.

Frost/Nixon

For three years after being forced from office, Nixon remained silent. But in summer 1977, the steely, cunning former commander-in-chief agreed to sit for one all-inclusive interview to confront the questions of his time in office and the Watergate scandal that ended his presidency. Nixon surprised everyone in selecting Frost as his televised confessor, intending to easily outfox the breezy British showman and secure a place in the hearts and minds of Americans. Likewise, Frost's team harboured doubts about their boss's ability to hold his own. But as the cameras rolled, a charged battle of wits resulted.

Loving

The story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple, whose challenge of their anti-miscegenation arrest for their marriage in Virginia led to a legal battle that would end at the US Supreme Court.

Princess Caraboo

Bristol, England, early 19th century. A beautiful young stranger who speaks a weird language is tried for the crime of begging. But when a man claims that he can translate her dialect, it is understood that the woman is a princess from a far away land. She is then welcomed by a family of haughty aristocrats that only wants to heighten their prestige. However, the local reporter is not at all convinced she is what she claims to be and investigates. Is Caraboo really a princess?

The Sugarland Express

Married small-time crooks Lou-Jean and Clovis Poplin lose their baby to the state of Texas and resolve to do whatever it takes to get him back. Lou-Jean gets Clovis out of jail, and the two steal their son from his foster home, in addition to taking a highway patrolman hostage. As a massive dragnet starts to pursue them across Texas, the couple become unlikely folk heroes and even start to bond with the captive policeman.

Suburra

A gangster known as "Samurai" wants to turn the waterfront of Rome into a new Las Vegas. All the local mob bosses have agreed to work for this common goal. But peace is not to last long.

Argentina, 1985

In the 1980s, a team of lawyers takes on the heads of Argentina's bloody military dictatorship in a battle against odds and a race against time.

Rescued by Ruby

Chasing his dream to join an elite K-9 unit, a state trooper partners with a fellow underdog: clever but naughty shelter pup Ruby. Based on a true story.

Brian Banks

An All-American football player's dreams to play in the NFL are halted when he is falsely accused of rape and sent to prison.

Sardar Udham

A young Sardar Udham Singh left deeply scarred by the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, escaped into the mountains of Afghanistan, reaching London in 1933-34. Carrying an unhealed wound for 21 years, the revolutionary assassinated Michael O’Dwyer on 13th March, 1940, the man at the helm of affairs in Punjab, April 1919 to avenge the lost lives of his beloved brethren.

Over the Edge

A group of bored teenagers rebel against authority in the community of New Granada.

Soldier of Orange

The lives of Erik Lanshof and five of his closest friends take different paths when the German army invades the Netherlands in 1940: fight and resistance, fear and resignation, collaboration and high treason.

Henry VIII and His Six Wives

1547, King Henry VIII's life has taken a turn for the worse and he is forced to look back over his life and the many loves which had brought him his three children, only one of which was the desired male heir to secure the Tudor dynasty.

The Chorus

Set in 1940s France, a new teacher at a school for disruptive boys gives hope and inspiration.

2018

A disaster film set during the 2018 Kerala Floods where people from all walks of life faced catastrophic consequences and put in collective efforts to survive the calamity.

My Week with Marilyn

London, 1956. Genius actor and film director Laurence Olivier is about to begin the shooting of his upcoming movie, premiered in 1957 as The Prince and the Showgirl, starring Marilyn Monroe. Young Colin Clark, who dreams on having a career in movie business, manages to get a job on the set as third assistant director.

Calendar Girls

Members of a Yorkshire branch of the Women's Institute cause controversy when they pose nude for a charity calendar.

Nixon

A look at President Richard M. Nixon—a man carrying the fate of the world on his shoulders while battling the self-destructive demands from within—spanning his troubled boyhood in California to the shocking Watergate scandal that would end his Presidency.

The Nightingale

The lives of two French sisters are torn apart by the onset of World War II.

The Sea Inside

The Sea Inside is about Spaniard Ramón Sampedro, who fought a 30-year campaign to win the right to end his life with dignity. It is the story of Ramón’s relationships with two women: Julia a lawyer who supports his cause, and Rosa, a local woman who wants to convince him that life is worth living.

Coal Miner's Daughter

Biography of Loretta Lynn, a country and western singer that came from poverty to fame.

The Wild One

The Black Rebels Motorcycle Club ride into the small California town of Wrightsville, eager to raise hell. Brooding gang leader Johnny Strabler takes a liking to Kathie, the daughter of the local lawman, as another club rolls into town.

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