Explore films
Movies inspired by and based on true stories.
Explore highly rated films from the 1920s to the present. View film trailers, reviews, and facts behind the films. Explore your favorite genres. Time travel through history by exploring films set in different historical periods. Watch true story films for free.
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Most films are highly rated on Rotten Tomatoes and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) with at least a 70% or 7/10 rating from critics and audiences alike, many with 80% or 8/10 or above. Enjoy the best true story films!
Explore Films Over 100 Years
Are you curious about the first films ever based on true stories and real events? Do you prefer newer films produced today? What about a favorite nostalgic decade? Take a ride through history by exploring true story films produced across almost 100 years -- from 1928's silent The Passion of Joan of Arc to the present!
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Your Favorite Genres
What are your favorite true story film genres? Explore broad categories like thriller or crime, as well as more specific categories. Dive into disaster and survival, education, feel-good, law and crime, music, sports, medical and disability, war, animals, artists, journalism, and biography. Explore true story movies across many genres!
Check out this awesome graph showing film genre popularity from 1910-2021, based on data from IMDb. It's for any films, ranging from obvious fiction genres (sci-fi and fantasy) to intended non-fiction (documentary), and everything in between. Notable trends shown in the graph are a rise in popularity among documentaries and thrillers, a decline in westerns and musicals, and comedy enjoying a relatively stable high popularity.
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Which genres do you think are the most popular among true story movies? You may notice trends on this website!
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Beyond traditional, broad genres, true story films are also broken down into even more particular subjects to explore on this website. Most movies are hybrids of two or more genres. Check them out!
Time Travel Through History
Experience history through films set in different time periods. Narratives that are only based on or inspired by true stories and events obviously do not give us the historical accuracy of delving into primary source materials. But they do give us a vivid glimpse into history and make for an entertaining ride.
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Imagine stepping into a time travel machine, like Bill and Ted on their excellent adventure or Marty McFly, who traveled to the 1950s and the Wild West. Of course, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and the Back to the Future trilogy are science fiction films. Perhaps one reason we love true story films is that they seem to transport us to another historical period in only about two hours of our lives, making them quick, inspiring starting points to delve deeper into history after the final scenes.
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Imagine opening your front door one day and seeing your friend pull up in a bright new car that is no ordinary car; it's a time travel machine that whisks you away to another time and place. Let's time travel through history with films! Explore films set during the Cold War, Vietnam War, World War II, U.S. Civil War eras, and more!
Underrated True Story Films
Some films inspired by and based on true stories have less than a 70% rating from critics, audiences, or both. Are they still worth about two hours of your life? You might find these films still worth a look. They may still entertain and inspire you to learn more history after they end.
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Some underrated true story movies include the disaster and survival story, Adrift; the biopic Mary Shelley, about the author of Frankenstein; the surprisingly accurate film Experimenter, dramatizing Stanley Milgram's famed research on obediance to authority; and the endearing story of an ordinary guy who became a singing sensation on the TV show "Britain's Got Talent" - One Chance. Give these underrated films a chance and take a look!
The Best Ways to Watch Films for Free
Where can you watch highly rated true story movies for free? For the quickest and most thorough results, simply enter the key word "watch," followed by the name of the film in a Google search. In the resulting list of where it's streaming now, some or none will be free.
Which streaming services and other sources reliably offer free, highly rated films based on true stories? Here are my go-to places to watch films for free!
