50 Best Movies Based on True Events

Matthew McConaughey stars as homophobic Dallas hustler Ron Woodroof, who learns that he is HIV positive and that a then-experimental drug to treat the condition is unavailable. He finds a way to obtain the life-saving medication, and begins to supply it to others with the same affliction. The film got six Academy Award nominations. McConaughey took home the Oscar for Best Actor, and his co-star, Jared Leto, won Best Supporting Actor.

Kenneth Branagh’s film, based on William Shakespeare’s play about King Henry V of England, has a perfect critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.

This account of frontiersman Hugh Glass’s ordeal in the 1820s after he was attacked by a bear and left for dead by his companions won Oscars for Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Director, and Best Cinematography, and received nine other Academy Award nominations.

Martin Scorsese’s critically acclaimed “The Wolf of Wall Street” is based on Jordan Belfort’s memoir of the same name. Belfort was a millionaire stockbroker who was sent to jail for securities fraud and money laundering.

Danny Boyle’s retelling of the story of a mountain climber who resorts to desperate measures when he is trapped beneath a boulder scored 93% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, with the site’s critics consensus describing it “As gut-wrenching as it is inspirational.”

Before directing the Netflix original “Okja,” South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho made “Memories of Murder,” based on the unsolved murders of 10 women in Hwaseong, South Korea. These are considered to be the work of the first serial killer in South Korean history.

Daniel Day-Lewis gave an Oscar-winning performance as Dublin-born Christy Brown, who was born with cerebral palsy but became a celebrated painter and author using the only part of his body he could control, his left foot. Day-Lewis’s co-star, Brenda Fricker, took home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s dramatization of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden was a financial as well as critical hit, grossing more than $95 million at the domestic box office against its $40 million budget.

“The Big Sick” is based loosely on the true-life story of standup comic Kumail Nanjiani and his wife writer Emily V. Gordon, who collaborated on the screenplay. This romantic comedy shot up to a 98% Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer rating.

David Lynch — best known for directing offbeat, often dark films such as “Eraserhead” — crafted a different, more gentle movie with 1999’s “The Straight Story.” The film tells the true story of Alvin Straight, an elderly man who drove a riding lawn mower 300 miles across the Midwest to visit his sick brother.

A 12-year-old boy in Tokyo must care for his three siblings when their mother abandons them. Critics gave the film a 92% score, according to Rotten Tomatoes. The Detroit Free Press called it “a sweet salute to the tenacity and courage of children who are blithely mistreated by adults…”

In “Waltz With Bashir,” director Ari Folman explores his memories, and those of old friends, of the 1982 Lebanon War. The animated film is uniquely powerful and original.

Critics gave this stirring account of the three months leading up to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. an almost perfect 99% Tomatometer score. Critics hailed it as “beautifully observed” and “a truly fine film.”

Nearly 40 years before the release of James Cameron’s “Titanic” came “A Night to Remember,” also based on the fated ship. The film is based on a popular book by Walter Lord of the same title.

George Roy Hill’s 1969 Western teams Paul Newman and Robert Redford in two of their most iconic roles — Butch Cassidy and the “Sundance Kid” Harry Longabaugh. The film is a defining piece of 1960s’ American cinema.

This historical epic recounts the life of the famed Indian leader as he fights against British rule. The movie won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Richard Attenborough and Best Actor for Ben Kingsley.

The eponymous Phillips was captain of the MV Maersk Alabama, seized by Somali pirates in 2009 — the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in 200 years. With Tom Hanks in the title role, critics consensus on Rotten Tomatoes hails the film as “Smart, powerfully acted, and incredibly intense.”

“Persepolis” is an animated autobiographical film by co-writer and director Marjane Satrapi. The Iranian Satrapi comes of age during the Islamic Revolution.

This classic adventure tale about prisoners of war escaping from a German prison camp during World War II was hailed by Variety as “a motion picture that entertains, captivates, thrills and stirs.”

“The Killing Fields” tells the story of Pol Pot’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Specifically, the film is based on the experiences of New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg and Cambodian journalist Dith Pran.

Ben Affleck directed and starred in this film about a true if unlikely story of a faux Hollywood producer who rescues six Americans from Tehran, Iran, during the 1979 hostage crisis. The movie was named Best Picture at the 2013 Academy Awards.

“Downfall” depicts the final days of Adolf Hitler’s life, largely from inside his Berlin bunker and based on the memoir of his secretary. While the controversial film inspired debate, it has widespread positive reviews, including 91% positive ratings from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 94% from audiences.

On its critics consensus, Rotten Tomatoes called George C. Scott’s portrayal of one of America’s most famous generals in this military epic “as definitive as any performance in the history of American biopics.” Scott won Best Actor, and the film won Best Picture at both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes. “Patton” won five additional Oscars as well.

“The Lion in Winter” — which is based on a Broadway play — portrays the marriage of Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he kept as a prisoner the majority of the time. The film has been praised for its dialogue of actors Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole.

The legendary car chase in this cops-and-drug-smugglers movie has been called the best in cinematic history. Members of the Motion Picture Academy liked “The French Connection” well enough to award it Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Gene Hackman). Hackman played detective Popeye Doyle, a fictionalized stand-in for real-life cop Eddie Egan.

David Lynch’s sophomore effort is a mostly accurate recounting of the life of Joseph Merrick — a physically deformed Englishman. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards but failed to win.

With a 95% Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score, critics consensus on the site describes the film as “tension-soaked drama shaded in black humor.” The movie about a bank robbery that turns into a hostage stand-off received six Academy Award nominations, winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist” is based on the autobiography of Polish composer, Wladyslaw Szpilman, during World War II. The film earned Polanski — currently a U.S. fugitive — an Academy Award for Best Director.

Steven Spielberg won the Oscar for Best Director (the film won four more, too) for this inspiring account of a group of GIs in WWII. The soldiers push into enemy territory to save a paratrooper whose three brothers have been killed in action. The critic consensus Rotten Tomatoes calls it an “unflinchingly realistic war film [that] virtually redefines the genre.”

“Anatomy of a Murder” is a courtroom drama crime film starring James Stewart. The film is based on a book by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker — written under a pen name — that details a real-life trial for which he served as defense attorney. It currently holds a perfect critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Masterful visual storytelling on an epic scale,” said Bob Mondello of NPR about this heroically scaled account of the dramatic evacuation of Allied forces from France in the face of a German advance during World War II.

Based on Tom Wolfe’s book of the same name, “The Right Stuff” recounts the true story of test pilots such as Chuck Yeager and Gordon Cooper as they break the sound barrier. The 193-minute film has been critically praised since its release, despite not doing well at the box office in 1983.

This historical drama about King George VI of England and the speech therapist who helped him overcome his stammer won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor (Colin Firth as the titular king), Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.

Terrence Malick’s debut film is his take on teenagers Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate’s 1950s killing spree. The crimes were also the inspiration behind the 1994 film “Natural Born Killers.”

This account of the Washington Post reporters — played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford — who exposed presidential skullduggery in the Watergate scandal has a 93% rating on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer. Newsday called it “a quintessential American movie.”

Social media has touched nearly every aspect of our lives, including providing the basis for movies as is the case with David Fincher’s “The Social Network.” The movie portrays the beginning of Facebook and its rise under the control of co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Based on Peter Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning play of the same name, this account of the life and successes of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — told through the eyes of his rival, Antonio Salieri — dominated the 1985 Oscars. “Amadeus” won eight Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.

The gritty Brazilian film “City of God” tells the true story of two children who grow up in Brazil’s favelas during the 1960s. The movie has near universal audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes.

Child molestation and cover-ups by the Catholic Church in Boston, as exposed by the Boston Globe, form the theme of this unsettling film, which is described by the Sydney Morning Herald as possibly “the best newspaper film since All the President’s Men.” A Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score of 97% bears out that judgment.

Martin Scorsese’s artful “Raging Bull” follows the story of former middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta. The film’s script is more specifically based on LaMotta’s autobiography, “Raging Bull: My Story.”

In pre-Civil War New York state, a free black man named Solomon Northrup is kidnapped and sold into slavery, where he remains for more than a decade. Northrup’s memoir of the experience, published in 1853, is the basis for this “unflinchingly brutal” but “also brilliant” film — as Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus calls it. The movie has a 95% Tomatometer score.

“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” was written and directed by German director Werner Herzog and is based on the travels of Spanish conquistador Lope de Aguirre in Peru. The story is influenced by the journals of a priest, Brother Gaspar de Carvajal, a fictionalized version of whom also appears in the film.

The Algerian struggle for independence from the French is the subject of this powerful film by Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo. Its Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score is an impressive 98%, and the site notes in its critics consensus that the movie “hasn’t aged a bit since its release…”

Buster Keaton’s “The General” is based on the story of the Confederate soldiers’ pursuit of the Union spies who commandeered a locomotive called The General. Critic Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader called the end result “an almost perfect entertainment.”

Daily Beast describes French actress Renee Jeanne Falconetti’s turn in this classic of the silent film era as “the greatest acting performance in movie history.” The original version, long believed to have been lost to fire, was rediscovered in perfect condition in a Norwegian mental hospital in 1981. With a 98% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, this is a film that — according to the Time Out — “remains one of the most staggeringly intense films ever made.”

“Das Boot” — which translates to “The Boat” — is often considered the best submarine movie of all time. The film is based on a novel written by Lothar-Günther Buchheim. The novel, and film, tell his experiences aboard a German submarine called U-96 during World War II.

This stunning epic, almost four hours long, made stars of Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif. O’Toole plays the title role of a British officer who rallies disparate Arab tribes against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The film also won seven Oscars, including those for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography.

Martin Scorsese’s mafia classic “Goodfellas” is based on Nicholas Pileggi’s nonfiction bestseller “Wiseguy.” The book tells the story of mobster Henry Hill — played by Ray Liotta in the movie — and his criminal associates.

Based on a semi-autobiographical short story by Japanese author Akiyuki Nosaka about the privations of World War II in Japan — including the death of Nosaka’s sister from malnutrition — this evocative animated masterpiece has a Tomatometer score of 97% from Rotten Tomatoes. The New York Times considers it “One of the most startling and moving animated films ever.”

Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” tells the true story of German factory owner Oskar Schindler, who saved 1,200 Jews from concentration camps during World War II. The film won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.