12 Years a Slave

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• Top 6 Movies Based on True Stories

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• Schindler's List

  "Schindler's List" (1993), directed by Steven Spielberg, dramatizes the true story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved over a thousand Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories, based on Thomas Keneally's nonfiction novel of the same name. Spielberg's decision to shoot almost entirely in stark black and white, largely on location in Poland including near the actual sites of the historical events, was widely credited with giving the film a documentary-like gravity that distinguished it from more conventionally polished historical dramas. The film won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, and it's widely credited with significantly deepening mainstream cinema's engagement with Holocaust history, later inspiring Spielberg to found the USC Shoah Foundation to record survivor testimonies. Schindler's List's combination of its meticulous historical grounding and its enduring role in mainstream Holocaust remembrance has made it one of the most significant and acclaimed true-story films ever produced.

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• The Social Network

  "The Social Network" (2010), directed by David Fincher from Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, dramatizes the founding of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University and the subsequent legal disputes with his co-founders and the Winklevoss twins over credit and ownership of the company. Sorkin's screenplay, built around competing depositions and conflicting accounts of the same events, embraced the genuine ambiguity of the real underlying legal disputes rather than presenting a single definitive version of what happened, a structural choice widely praised by critics as an unusually sophisticated approach to dramatizing contested recent history. Jesse Eisenberg's performance as a fictionalized version of Zuckerberg drew significant critical acclaim, and the film's release while the real Facebook was still a relatively young and rapidly growing company gave it an unusually immediate, real-time quality rare for a historical biopic. The Social Network's combination of its sophisticated multi-perspective legal-dispute structure and its unusually immediate proximity to still-unfolding real events has made it one of the most critically acclaimed true-story films of the 21st century.

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• Erin Brockovich

  "Erin Brockovich" (2000), directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Julia Roberts, dramatizes the true story of the real Erin Brockovich, an unemployed single mother who, working as a legal clerk, helped build a massive lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric over water contamination in Hinkley, California. Roberts's performance won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and her portrayal of the real Brockovich's brash, persistent determination in the face of both corporate stonewalling and professional condescension became one of the most acclaimed performances of her career. The real underlying case resulted in a $333 million settlement, at the time the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history, and the real Erin Brockovich served as a consultant on the film and appeared in a small cameo role. Erin Brockovich's combination of Julia Roberts's Oscar-winning lead performance and its grounding in one of the largest environmental settlements in American legal history has made it one of the most acclaimed true-story legal dramas ever produced.

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• Hidden Figures

  "Hidden Figures" (2016), directed by Theodore Melfi, dramatizes the true story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three Black women mathematicians whose calculations at NASA were critical to the success of the early American space program, based on Margot Lee Shetterly's nonfiction book of the same name. The film brought significant mainstream public attention to the real contributions of Black women "computers" at NASA during the Space Race, a history that had received relatively little prior widespread recognition, and it prompted renewed public interest in and honors for the real Katherine Johnson, who was still alive at the time of the film's release. Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe's central performances drew significant critical acclaim, and the film became a notable box office success, outperforming many contemporary awards-season dramas and demonstrating a substantial mainstream audience for historical stories centered on Black women. Hidden Figures's combination of its overdue mainstream spotlight on real, previously under-recognized NASA scientists and its strong central performances has made it one of the most culturally significant true-story films of its decade.

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• Catch Me If You Can

  "Catch Me If You Can" (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, dramatizes the real early life of Frank Abagnale Jr., who successfully impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer while forging millions of dollars in checks before being caught by an FBI agent, played by Tom Hanks. The film was based on Abagnale's own memoir, and the real Abagnale, who later became a longtime security consultant working with the FBI, served as a consultant on the production, giving the filmmakers direct access to the actual details and methods behind his real-life cons. The film's stylish, buoyant tone and 1960s period production design, paired with John Williams's jazz-inflected score, gave the true story a lighter, more playful cinematic register than many other crime-based true stories, emphasizing the audacious cleverness of Abagnale's real schemes over their consequences. Catch Me If You Can's combination of its direct access to the real Frank Abagnale's own account and its stylish period filmmaking has made it one of the most purely entertaining true-story films ever produced.

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More in Film & TV

• Aliens

  "Aliens" (1986), James Cameron's sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 horror film "Alien," follows Ellen Ripley, again played by Sigourney Weaver, returning to the site of her original nightmare alongside a squad of space marines, shifting the franchise's tone from claustrophobic horror toward large-scale military action. Cameron's decision to reframe the story as a war film rather than repeating the original's slow-burn horror approach represented a genuinely bold structural choice for a sequel, and its success helped establish the template for how a franchise could meaningfully evolve its genre from one installment to the next rather than simply repeating a successful formula. Sigourney Weaver's performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, an unusually rare honor for a science-fiction action film, and her character's fierce protectiveness toward the orphaned girl Newt became a widely cited example of a genuinely three-dimensional action heroine. Aliens's combination of its bold genre-shifting sequel structure and Sigourney Weaver's Oscar-nominated lead performance has made it one of the most acclaimed and influential action films ever made.

• John Wick

  "John Wick" (2014), directed by former stuntman Chad Stahelski, starring Keanu Reeves as a retired hitman drawn back into violence after the killing of a puppy given to him by his late wife, launched a franchise built around meticulously choreographed gun-fu combat sequences and an elaborately realized criminal underworld. The film's action choreography, drawing heavily on Stahelski's own stunt-industry background, emphasized long, unbroken takes and geographically coherent fight staging, a deliberate departure from the rapid-cut editing style common in much contemporary action filmmaking, and it was widely credited with revitalizing American action cinema's approach to hand-to-hand and gun combat. The film's tightly built mythology, including its secret hotel network for assassins and its own internal criminal code and currency, gave the deceptively simple revenge premise a distinctive, richly imagined world that helped sustain and expand the story across multiple sequels. John Wick's combination of its industry-changing action choreography and its richly built criminal-underworld mythology has made it one of the most influential action franchises of the 21st century.

• Raiders of the Lost Ark

  "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), directed by Steven Spielberg from a story conceived with George Lucas, introduced archaeologist-adventurer Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford, as he races Nazi agents to recover the Ark of the Covenant across a globe-trotting 1930s adventure. The film was deliberately conceived as a modern homage to the serialized adventure matinee films of the 1930s and '40s that Lucas and Spielberg had grown up watching, and its combination of practical stunt work, globe-trotting set pieces, and pulp-adventure tone established a widely imitated template for the entire modern action-adventure genre. Harrison Ford's performance as the wry, resourceful, and frequently improvising Indiana Jones became one of the most iconic action-hero portrayals in film history, and the character's leather jacket, fedora, and bullwhip became instantly recognizable pieces of film iconography. Raiders of the Lost Ark's combination of its loving homage to classic adventure serials and Harrison Ford's genre-defining lead performance has made it one of the most influential and beloved action-adventure films ever made.

• The Terminator

  "The Terminator" (1984), directed by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a relentless cyborg assassin sent back in time from a future war between humans and machines, follows the machine's pursuit of a young waitress destined to become the mother of humanity's future resistance leader. The film's relatively modest budget forced Cameron to rely on tight, tension-driven pacing and inventive practical effects rather than large-scale spectacle, and its lean, suspenseful structure became a genre touchstone distinct from the more expansive sequel it would later spawn. Schwarzenegger's largely silent, mechanically relentless performance as the title character established him as a major action star and created one of cinema's most instantly recognizable villain archetypes, with the character's blank, unstoppable menace becoming a widely referenced and parodied piece of pop culture. The Terminator's combination of James Cameron's tension-driven low-budget filmmaking and Schwarzenegger's star-making villain performance has made it one of the most influential science-fiction action films ever produced.

• Mad Max: Fury Road

  "Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015), directed by George Miller as the fourth installment in his own "Mad Max" franchise three decades after the previous entry, follows Max Rockatansky and rebel warrior Imperator Furiosa across an extended, near-continuous vehicular chase through a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland. The film's production famously relied overwhelmingly on practical stunts and real vehicle effects rather than digital compositing, a choice that drew significant critical attention for achieving a tactile, visceral intensity that many critics and filmmakers cited as a genuine rebuke to the era's more common CGI-heavy action filmmaking. Charlize Theron's performance as Furiosa, effectively co-leading the film alongside Tom Hardy's title character, was widely credited with helping redefine what a central female action protagonist could look like within a major studio franchise, and the film earned ten Academy Award nominations, an unusually high count for a pure action film. Mad Max: Fury Road's combination of its practical-effects-driven filmmaking and its critically transformative approach to its central action heroine has made it one of the most acclaimed and influential action films of the 21st century.