Six sliders. No stars.
Nothing on this site is recommended because people liked it. Films are described by what they are (how heavy, how fast, how far from the real world), and you get the ones closest to what you asked for.
Neither of these is the better film. They are just at opposite ends.
212 films tagged true story, showing 50
Move a slider to sort by what films are like.
2025 · Comedy
On the opening night of Oklahoma! in 1943, the lyricist Lorenz Hart slips away to a Broadway bar and holds court, sore about the hit his old partner wrote without him. One room, and almost all talk.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
In 1983 a Scottish schoolboy starts swearing uncontrollably in class, years before anyone can tell him why, and his school treats it as bad behaviour. Based on a real life, following him from twelve into his twenties.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
A West Virginia basketball player wins a local boxing contest and lets the coach who spotted her run her career, then marry her. It follows her rise through the 1990s, with a controlling husband in her corner.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
After Shivaji dies, his son Sambhaji takes command of the Maratha resistance and strikes at the Mughal empire, while his own court plots to replace him. A long war epic, battle after battle.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Crime
In Indianapolis in 1977, a man wires a shotgun to a mortgage broker's son's neck, walks him home at gunpoint and calls a radio station to explain why. Taken from a real standoff, and mostly one apartment with the police outside.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Two childhood friends in a north Indian village, one Muslim and one Dalit, study for the police exam because the uniform would finally get them some respect. It moves slowly and stays close to the two of them.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Two Delhi lawyers who share a nickname and cannot stand each other end up on opposite sides of a case about farmers losing their land to a huge development. A long courtroom comedy, and the sparring is the point.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A woman in 1970s India is set aside when her lawyer husband takes a second wife, and she goes to court for the maintenance he promised her. The case climbs to the Supreme Court and becomes a national argument.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Thriller
In 1970 a plane out of Tokyo is hijacked by radicals demanding to be flown to Pyongyang, and Seoul's spy agency sends its best fixer to get the hostages back. A black comedy, mostly about the men on the ground.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
After her father dies suddenly, a woman buys a goshawk and gives herself over to training it, pulling away from everyone else while she does. Mostly her, the bird, and the fields.
AI estimate, not yet described
2012 · Thriller
With six US diplomats hiding in Tehran in 1979, a CIA man proposes to walk them out as the crew of a fake science fiction film. Half Hollywood comedy, half thriller that keeps tightening.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A biopic of Yogi Adityanath, tracing a quiet boy from the hills through monkhood to running India's largest state. It covers decades and stays on one man throughout.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Indira Gandhi climbs the Congress party and wins a war, then, after a court voids her election, suspends civil liberties across India. It covers decades and moves quickly through a lot of history.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Crime
A man is found stabbed to death in a Valencia car park, and the detective on the case keeps coming back to his young widow. Based on a real Spanish case, and told as a police investigation.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Thriller
A border force officer in Kashmir in the early 2000s works the intercepted radio traffic of a local killing squad, and follows it toward the man behind the attack on parliament. Slow patient work, then raids.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Musical
Two rappers from Dundee cannot get anyone in the record industry to take them seriously, so they put on American accents and spend three years pretending to be from California. Based on what the pair actually did.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A woman takes her nonbinary teenager to Amsterdam to stay with her gay father, and the kid asks to stay on for a year. Three generations in one flat, talking it out, based on the director's own family.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Franz Kafka in Prague, caught between a domineering father, a dull job at an insurance company and the urge to write. It follows him from his teens to his early death, through friendships and love affairs.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Thriller
As the Taliban take Kabul in 2021, hundreds of Afghans gather at the gates of the French embassy, and the officer inside argues for letting them all in. Mostly tense negotiation, from a true account.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
The true story of Willy Monteiro Duarte, a 21-year-old of Cape Verdean descent beaten to death in an Italian town while stepping in to defend a friend. Drawn from Federica Angeli's book on the case.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Documentary
A documentary written as a letter to David Cunio, an Israeli actor taken hostage on 7 October 2023. The director had once cast him in a film about a kidnapping, and builds this out of that old footage.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Two stretches in the early life of the Galician figure Castelao: 1918, when he left a civil service desk to work as a doctor through the flu pandemic, and 1929, when he and his wife went to Brittany after losing their son.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Documentary
Four boys grow up in post-war Britain, find American blues and rock and roll, and end up in the same band. Archive footage and their own voices, and it stops after the first year.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
A lawyer takes on the case of a young woman from Tucuman, jailed after being accused of an illegal abortion, and runs into a legal system that wants her to lose. Court, paperwork, and a protest movement growing outside.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Documentary
Three virus scientists who traced SARS to a bat cave in 2003, and warned that a worse one was coming, find themselves blamed for COVID when it arrives. Interviews, fieldwork and a lot of news footage.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Horror
In a 17th-century Latvian village a maid is put on trial for witchcraft, and a man stands up in court to declare himself a werewolf. Animated for adults, taken from a real heresy trial, and very strange.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · War
In 1942 a Japanese ship carrying British prisoners of war is torpedoed off the Chinese coast, and fishermen on a nearby occupied island start pulling survivors out of the sea. Taken from the real Lisbon Maru sinking, with the Japanese garrison right there.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
The Italian stage actress Eleonora Duse goes back to work after the First World War, at an age when her body will not do what she asks of it. Slow and quiet, as much about the power around her as about the theatre.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Documentary
A director asks people in Rijeka what they know about the Italian poet who occupied their city in 1919, then gets them to act the occupation out. Part documentary, part reenactment, rehearsals left in.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
In 1980 the writer Goliarda Sapienza is arrested for theft and meets two much younger women inside. The friendship the three of them build carries on after they get out.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2017 · Comedy
In 1973 the top woman in tennis agrees to a televised match against a loud former champion who says no woman can beat him. Half of it is the circus, half is her private life.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
An Asháninka boy is taken from his village by Shining Path guerrillas and turned into one of their fighters. Peruvian, based on a true story, and told from the boy's side.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Crime
In the years after the fall of Saigon, men hijack Vietnamese passenger planes to get out of the country, and the air marshals aboard are the only ones trained to stop them. Based on real hijackings.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Family
A city weatherman breaks down on the road to Broome and ends up looking after orphaned baby kangaroos with a local girl. A gentle family film, loosely based on the man who started a real kangaroo sanctuary.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Horror
The Warrens have retired and Ed's heart is bad when a Pennsylvania family with an antique mirror in the house starts losing sleep. Their daughter, who sees things too, gets pulled in.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
An American army psychiatrist is sent to assess Hermann Goering and the other Nazi leaders held for trial at Nuremberg. Long and talky, built around the conversations between the two men.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Crime
A divorced army veteran robs fast food restaurants by cutting in through their roofs, more than forty times, and after escaping prison hides out inside a toy store. Based on a true story and played as a comedy.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
In 1981 Bruce Springsteen comes off a sold-out tour, holes up in a rented house near his home town and records a demo album on a four-track in the bedroom. Mostly quiet: one man, a tape machine, and his father.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Musical
The life of Ann Lee, who grew up working a Manchester cotton factory in the 1700s and became the leader of the Shakers, told as a musical. The worship is danced and shouted, and so is much of the film.
AI estimate, not yet described
2021 · Drama
A nine-year-old boy's street in 1969 Belfast turns overnight into a place with barricades, and his parents have to decide whether to stay. Black and white, shot at kid height, and mostly family talk.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
Red Crescent volunteers take an emergency call from a little girl trapped in a car under fire in Gaza, and try to keep her talking while they get an ambulance to her. Almost all of it is one room and a phone line.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Musical
Two Wisconsin performers meet as neighbours in the late 1980s, start a Neil Diamond tribute act together and fall in love while doing it. Based on a true story, and full of the songs.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Drama
A school bus driver in Paradise, California turns back into a wildfire to collect twenty-two children and their teacher, with the roads closing behind him. Most of it is the drive itself.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Documentary
A documentary built almost entirely from police bodycam footage of the neighbourhood disputes that ended when a Florida woman shot the mother next door. It runs in order, with almost no narration.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Crime
A 1950s New York mob boss survives an assassination attempt ordered by his own underboss, and tells him he only wants to retire. The underboss does not believe him, and it goes from there.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Thriller
Three saturation divers are working on a gas line 300 feet under the North Sea when the ship above them loses its position, dragging the diving bell away and stranding one of them on the bottom. It is a true story, and most of it is the rescue.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Crime
A Boston gangster becomes an FBI informant and uses the arrangement to take over the city, while the agent who signed him up keeps covering for him. Cold and talky, with long scenes of men at tables.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Comedy
After his mother dies, a New York transit mechanic spends her life insurance on a Staten Island restaurant with a kitchen staffed entirely by grandmothers. Warm, slow and based on a real place.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2025 · Drama
Writing and swimming are a girl's way out of a house where her father abuses her, and she takes both to college in Texas. What follows is years of drinking, a bad marriage and real loss.
AI estimate, not yet described
2018 · Drama
The first Black officer on the Colorado Springs force answers a Klan recruitment ad by phone and sends a white colleague to the meetings in his place. Funny for long stretches, then it stops being funny.
AI estimate, not yet described