20 Movies Based on a True Story

Any movie based on a true story or inspired by real events has its own appeal and many people enjoy these stories. In this post, we have compiled a short list of some movies that are more or less based on a true story.

20 Movies Based on a True Story

1. Argo

• Year: 2012
• Director: Ben Affleck

At the onset of the Iran revolution in 1979, the CIA creates a fake production company to smuggle six diplomats out of the country by pretending to be a Canadian film crew shooting a fake Star Wars-alike movie.

However, the movie downplays a lot of the real-life events.

2. The Blind Side

• Year: 2009
• Director: John Lee Hancock

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 making a career in football. The movie stars Sandra Bullock, who also won an Oscar for Best Actress.

Meanwhile, the film was criticized by many over how it portrayed race, while Oher said that it had a negative impact on his career.

3. Straight Outta Compton

• Year: 2015
• Director: F. Gary Gray

This is a biopic that tells the story of N.W.A., the controversial gangsta rap group that started in the 1980 and consisted of Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube. However, some details of the movie are changed, but one fact is true; Dr. Dre gets Eazy-E to bail him out of jail, and Dre later produced a track for Eazy-E to return the favor.

4. Gran Turismo

• Year: 2023
• Director: Neil Blomkamp

Starring David Harbour, Orlando Bloom and Archie Madekwe, Gran Turismo is inspired by the real-life journey of Jann Mardenborough, a gamer who was given the opportunity of a lifetime when Nissan offered him a position in their professional driving team.

5. Cinderella Man

• Year: 2005
• Director: Ron Howard

This is a story about Irish-American heavyweight boxing champion James L. Braddock. However, the Chicago Tribune claimed that Howard glorified Braddock and inaccurately portrayed his opponent, boxer Max Baer, as an evil, unredeemable man.

6. Shindler’s List

• Year: 1993
• Director: Steven Spielberg

The movie stars Liam Neeson as Oskar Shindler, a German businessman credited with saving more than 1,000 Jewish lives when he employed them in his factory, in this epic historical drama.

However, there are claims that real-life Shindler had nothing to with saving Jewish lives and may have helped Nazis invade Poland.

7. The Insider

• Year: 1999
• Director: Michael Mann

Based on a true story between Jeffery 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 has been adapted from Marie Brenner’s Vanity Fair article “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

8. The Untouchables

• Year: 1987
• Director: Brian De Palma

The movie is set during Prohibition in 1930 and tells the story of a crime boss Al Capone, who kept the liquor flowing Chicago, and Elliot Ness, a Prohibition agent agent assigned to stop Capone.

The film was based on a book co-authored by Ness by the same name.

9. The Pursuit of Happyness

• Year: 2006
• Director: Gabriele Muccino

Will Smith portrays Chris Gardener, an entrepreneur and single father who tries to raise his son, who is also played by Smith’s real son, Jaden Smith, while homeless.

10. Downfall

• Year: 2004
• Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel

Based on the historical accounts of the final 10 days of Adolf Hitler’s rule in Nazi Germany.

11. The Wolf of Wall Street

• Year: 2013
• Director: Martin Scorsese

The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Wall Street financier Jordan Belfort, who wrote the book that the movie is based on. The film is about actual events, including Belfort’s rise to success in a penny stock house.

However, Donnie Azoff, played by Jonah Hill, is a fictional character and the names of Belfort’s wives were also changed.

12. Into the Wild

• Year: 2007
• Director: Sean Penn

Based on a eponymous non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer, the film tells the story of Christopher McCandless, who was found dead in an abandoned bus north of Denali National Park.

However, the toxic mushroom – what killed him in the film – may not been been the actual cause of his death.

13. Rush

• Year: 2013
• Director: Ron Howard

“Rush” tells the story about two Formula One race car drivers, British James Hunt (played by Chris Hemsworth) and Austrian Niki Lauda (played by Daniel Bruhl).

14. The World’s Fastest Indian

• Year: 2005
• Director: Roger Donaldson

This is a story about Burt Munro, an aging New Zealander who rebuilt a 1920 Indian Twin Scout motorcycle, which helped him set a world record for land speed at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.

15. October Sky

• Year: 1999
• Director: Joe Johnston

Staring Jake Gyllenhaal as Homer H. Hickam Jr., the film tells the story of the lives of four men in Coalwood, West Virginia, who experimented with creating their own rockets. In real life, Hickman went on to become a NASA engineer and wrote “Rocket Boys,”

16. The Motorcycle Diaries

• Year: 2004
• Director: Walter Salles

The movie is based on a memoir of 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara and shows his life in the years before he became known as Che, the famous Marxist leader. The story follows young Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado’s journey across South America.

17. The French Connection

• Year: 1971
• Director: William Friedkin

Based on the story of two NYPD detectives, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosse, who were portrayed as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Buddy “Cloudy” Russo, the film follows them as they search for a French heroin smuggler named Alain Charrnier (whose real life name was Jean Jehan).

18. Titanic

• Year: 1997
• Director: James Cameron

While Jack and Rose (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) were fictional, the movie tells the story of the sinking of the Titanic.

19. Bonnie and Clyde

• Year: 1967
• Director: Arthur Penn

The film tells the story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who went on a crime spree that ended after a six-month manhunt. The movie accurately portrays Bonnie as a waitress in Texas who runs off with Clyde and the two become famous after a major shootout with police.

20. Walk the Line

• Year: 2005
• Director: James Mangold

The movie is about one of country’s music most famous love stories; Johnny Cash and June Cater. However, Cash’s daughter, Kathy, objected to how her mother (Cash’s first wife) was portrayed in the film.

She said that her mother was supportive of the musician until he started using drugs and stopped coming home.

While there are hundreds of movies based on a true story or real life events, these are just some of the picks we made. Let us know what you think about list in the comments down below.

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