Based on a True Story

Based on a True Story

True to its name, this is a collection of narrative films based on real-life stories.

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Based on a True Story
  • The Iron Prefect

    Directed by Pasquale Squitieri • Drama • With Giuliano Gemma, Claudia Cardinale • 1977 • 118 minutes

    Based on the true story of Cesare Mori, the Iron Prefect who was sent to Sicily for an Eliot Ness-in-The Untouchables style clean up of the mafia. Pasquale Squitieri (The Climber) directs this st...

  • On the Wandering Paths (w/ Jean Dujardin)

    Directed by Denis Imbert • Drama • 2024 • 95 minutes

    A celebrated writer with a penchant for extreme experiences and solo treks, Pierre (Jean Dujardin), is a survivor of his own life. He has always done everything on his terms. One drunken evening, he climbs the facade of a building and falls se...

  • Midwives

    Directed by Léa Fehner • Drama • 2024 • 100 minutes

    After five years of dedicated learning in the noble profession of midwifery – often hailed as “the most beautiful job in the world” – Louise (Héloïse Janjaud) and Sofia (Khadija Kouyaté) are embarking on their professional journey, bracing them...

  • Skies of Lebanon

    Directed by Chloé Mazlo • Drama • With Alba Rohrwacher, Wajdi Mouawad, Isabelle Zighondi • 2020 • 92 minutes

    A poetic blending of the personal and political, Skies of Lebanon combines live action with animation to create a vivid picture of Lebanon, inspired by the family history of filmmaker Chl...

  • Mademoiselle Paradis

    Directed by Barbara Albert • Drama • With Maria Dragus, Devid Striesow, Lukas Miko • 2017 • 97 minutes

    Set in 18th century Vienna, this is the true story of Maria Paradis, a gifted piano player and friend of Mozart, who lost her eyesight as a child. Desperate to cure their talented daughter, her...

  • The Academy of Muses

    Directed by Jose Luis Guerin • Drama • With Emanuela Forgetta, Patricia Gil, Rosa Delor • 2017 • 92 minutes

    A university professor teaches a class on muses in art and literature as a means of romancing his female students in this breathtaking new film from José Luis Guerín, director of the widel...

  • The Wolf House

    Directed by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña • Animation • 2018 • 72 minutes

    Maria, a young woman finds refuge in a house in the south of Chile after escaping from a sect of German religious fanatics. She is welcomed into the home by two pigs, the only inhabitants of the place. Like in a dream,...

  • Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge

    Directed by Marie Noëlle • Drama • With Charles Berling; Karolina Gruszka • 2017 • 100 minutes

    The most turbulent five years in the life of a genius woman: Between 1905, where Marie Curie comes with Pierre Curie to Stockholm to be awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the radioactivity an...

  • The Twentieth Century

    Directed by Matthew Rankin • Drama • With Dan Beirne, Mikhaïl Ahooja • 2019 • 90 minutes

    Toronto, 1899. Aspiring young politician Mackenzie King (Dan Beirne) dreams of becoming the Prime Minister of Canada. But his romantic vacillation between a British soldier and a French nurse, exacerbated by...

  • Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

    Directed by Marc Rothemund • Drama • With Julia Jentsch • 2005 • 117 minutes

    The true story of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroine is brought to thrilling life in the multi-award winning drama Sophie Scholl-The Final Days. Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Sophie Scholl s...

  • Memoir of War

    Directed by Emmanuel Finkiel • Drama • With Mélanie Thierry • 2018 • 127 minutes

    In Emmanuel Finkiel’s haunting adaptation of Marguerite Duras’s semi- autobiographical novel, The War: A Memoir, the famed author (Mélanie Thierry) recounts an emotionally complex story of love, loss, and perseveran...

  • A Quiet Passion

    Directed by Terence Davies • Drama • With Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle • 2017 • 126 minutes

    Cynthia Nixon delivers a triumphant performance as Emily Dickinson as she personifies the wit, intellectual independence and pathos of the poet whose genius only came to be recognized after her death. Acc...

  • Down by Love

    Directed by Pierre Godeau • Drama • With Adèle Exarchopoulos, Guillaume Gallienne • 2015 • 110 minutes

    In DOWN BY LOVE, life is turned upside down for newly incarcerated Anna (Adéle Exarchopoulos, Blue is the Warmest Color) when she meets Jean (Guillame Gallienne, Yves Saint Laurent), the warde...

  • Charlie's Country

    Directed by Rolf De Heer • Drama • With David Gulpilil, Peter Djigirr, Luke Ford • 2014 • 108 minutes

    Living in a remote Aboriginal community in the northern part of Australia, Charlie is a warrior past his prime. As the government increases its stranglehold over the community’s traditional way ...

  • Female Directors

    Directed by Yang Mingming • Documentary • 2012 • 43 minutes

    Ah-Ming and Yueyue are two out-of-work film school grads living in Beijing who decide to turn the camera on each other and make a film about their lives.

    On the surface, FEMALE DIRECTORS is the ultimate documentary for the age of overs...

  • Party Girl

    Directed by Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger, Samuel Theis • Drama • With Angélique Litzenburger, Joseph Bour, Mario Theis, Samuel Theis, Séverine Litzenburger, Cynthia Litzenburger • 2014 • 95 minutes

    Angelique is a 60-year-old bar hostess in a cabaret located near the border between France and...

  • Lumumba

    Directed by Raoul Peck • Drama • With Eriq Ebouaney • 2001 • 115 minutes

    Made in the tradition of such true-life political thrillers as Malcolm X and JFK, Raoul Peck's award-winning Lumumba is a gripping epic that dramatizes for the first time the rise and fall of legendary African leader Patric...

  • Diplomacy

    Directed by Volker Schlöndorff • Drama • With André Dussollier, Niels Arestrup, Burghart Klaußner • 2014 • 85 minutes

    As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then ‘only as a field of rubb...

  • In Her Name

    Directed by Vincent Garenq • Drama • With Daniel Auteuil • 2015 • 87 minutes

    A gripping and emotional legal drama based on a true story that moved France for three decades. Starring Daniel Auteuil (Jean De Florette) and Sebastian Koch (Homeland, The Life of Others).

    In 1982, André Bamberski (Da...

  • The Outsider

    Directed by Christophe Barratier • Drama • With Arthur Dupont, François-Xavier Demaison, Sabrina Ouazani • 2018 • 117 minutes

    Before the subprime mortgage crisis began unfolding in 2008, causing chaos in world markets and misery among millions of homeowners, another financial apocalypse was alre...

  • "I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians"

    Directed by Radu Jude • Drama • With Ioana Iacob, Alex Bogdan, Alexandru Dabija • 2019 • 140 minutes

    “I do not care if we go down in history as barbarians.” These words, spoken by Romania’s military dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu in the Council of Ministers in the summer of 1941, started the eth...

  • Camille Claudel (w/ Isabelle Adjani)

    Directed by Bruno Nuytten • Drama • With Isabelle Adjani, Madeleine Robinson, Laurent Grevill, Philippe Clevenot, Gérard Depardieu • 1988 • 175 minutes

    The biography of the iconic French sculptor Camille Claudel in a tale of love, betrayal and female empowerment. When her enthusiasm for the arts...