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Movies: Best "docudrama" Movies

Docudrama (or documentary drama) is a genre of television and film, which features dramatized re-enactments of actual events. It is described as a hybrid of documentary and drama and "a fact-based representation of real event". Docudramas typically strive to adhere to known historical facts, while allowing some degree of dramatic license in peripheral details, such as when there are gaps in the historical record. Dialogue may, or may not, include the actual words of real-life people, as recorded in historical documents. Docudrama producers sometimes choose to film their reconstructed events in the actual locations in which the historical events occurred. A docudrama, in which historical fidelity is the keynote, is generally distinguished from a film merely "based on true events", a term which implies a greater degree of dramatic license, and from the concepts of historical drama, a broader category which may also incorporate entirely fictionalized events intermixed with factual ones, and historical fiction, stories generally featuring fictional characters and plots taking place in historical settings or against the backdrop of historical events. As a portmanteau, docudrama is sometimes confused with docufiction. However, unlike docufiction—which is essentially a documentary ... ()

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227 movies found (page 1/8):

Reality(2023)

1h 23min | Drama, Thriller
3.2/5 (with 124 votes)

Augusta, Georgia, United States, June 3, 2017. After running some errands, Reality Winner returns home, where she is approached by two men.

Directed by Tina Satter - With Sydney Sweeney, Marchánt Davis, Josh Hamilton

The Naked City(1948)

FSK: 12+ years
| 1h 36min | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
3.6/5 (with 101 votes)

The Naked City portrays the police investigation that follows the murder of a young model. A veteran cop is placed in charge of the case and he sets about, with the help of other beat cops and detectives, finding the girl's killer.

Reds(1981)

FSK: 12+ years
| 3h 15min | Drama, History, Romance / Love
3.5/5 (with 136 votes)

An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.

After Death(2023)

2.7/5 (with 1 vote)

Based on real near-death experiences, the afterlife is explored with the guidance of New York Times bestselling authors, medical experts, scientists and survivors who shed a light on what awaits us.

Directed by Stephen Gray, Chris Radtke

Mommie Dearest(1981)

FSK: 12+ years
| 2h 9min | Drama
3.2/5 (with 83 votes)

Renowned actress Joan Crawford, at the height of her career, adopts two orphans — Christina and Christopher — to fill the lonely gap in her personal life. However, as her professional and romantic relationships sour, Joan's already callous and abusive behavior towards Christina intensifies. Christina leaves home to pursue an acting path of her own, only to find her mother's presence still overshadowing her.

Four Daughters(2023)

1h 50min | Drama, Documentary
3.8/5 (with 13 votes)

Between light and darkness stands Olfa, a Tunisian woman and the mother of four daughters. One day, her two older daughters disappear. To fill in their absence, the filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania invites professional actresses and invents a unique cinema experience that will lift the veil on Olfa and her daughters’ life stories.

Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania

Life, and Nothing More…(1992)

1h 35min | Drama
3.8/5 (with 52 votes)

After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

The Cave(2019)

1h 43min | Adventure, Drama
3.0/5 (with 15 votes)

When a youth football team of 12 boys, aged 11-16, and their 25-year-old coach is trapped deep inside a cave in Northern Thailand, thousands of volunteers and soldiers from around the world unite in a race against time to find them.

Directed by Tom Waller

The Dam Busters(1955)

3.5/5 (with 59 votes)

The story of the conception of a new British weapon for smashing the German dams in the Ruhr industrial complex and the execution of the raid by 617 Squadron 'The Dam Busters'.

Jesse Stone: Sea Change(2007)

3.6/5 (with 38 votes)

Police Chief Jesse Stone's relationship with his ex-wife worsens, and he fears he's relapsing into alcoholism. To get his mind off his problems, Jesse begins working on the unsolved murder of a bank teller shot during a robbery. Also, his investigation of an alleged rape draws him into conflict with the town council — which hopes to preserve Paradise's reputation as an ideal seaside resort.

Directed by Robert Harmon

Another Day of Life(2018)

FSK: 12+ years
| 1h 26min | Animation, Documentary, History
3.7/5 (with 45 votes)

In 1975, Ryszard Kapuściński, a veteran Polish journalist, embarked on a seemingly suicidal road trip into the heart of the Angola's civil war. There, he witnessed once again the dirty reality of war and discovered a sense of helplessness previously unknown to him. Angola changed him forever: it was a reporter who left Poland, but it was a writer who returned….

Black Friday(2004)

2h 23min | Crime, Drama
3.7/5 (with 35 votes)

Bombs tear through Bombay, wreaking havoc and polarising the citizens. With perpetrators at large, the state launches a massive drive to unmask the truth behind these events.

Directed by Anurag Kashyap - With Kay Kay Menon
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20,000 Days on Earth(2014)

FSK: 6+ years
| 1h 37min | Documentary, Drama, Music
3.6/5 (with 79 votes)

A semi-fictionalized documentary about a day in the life of Australian musician Nick Cave's persona.

Directed by Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard - With Nick Cave

An Adventure in Space and Time(2013)

FSK: 0+ years
| 1h 23min | Drama
3.9/5 (with 86 votes)

This docudrama travels back in time to 1963 to see how Doctor Who was first brought to the screen. Actor William Hartnell felt trapped by a succession of hard-man roles. Wannabe producer Verity Lambert was frustrated by the TV industry's glass ceiling. Both of them were to find unlikely hope and unexpected challenges in the form of a Saturday tea-time drama. Allied with a team of unusual but brilliant people, they went on to create the longest running science fiction series ever made.

What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?(2004)

FSK: 0+ years
| 1h 49min | Documentary, Comedy, Drama
2.6/5 (with 47 votes)

Amanda is a divorced woman who makes a living as a photographer. During the Fall of the year Amanda begins to see the world in new and different ways when she begins to question her role in life, her relationships with her career and men and what it all means. As the layers to her everyday experiences fall away insertions in the story with scientists, and philosophers and religious leaders impart information directly to an off-screen interviewer about academic issues, and Amanda begins to understand the basis to the quantum world beneath. During her epiphany as she considers the Great Questions raised by the host of inserted thinkers, she slowly comprehends the various inspirations and begins to see the world in a new way.

The War Game(1966)

48min | War, TV Movie
3.9/5 (with 59 votes)

A docudrama depicting a hypothetical nuclear attack on Britain. After backing the film's development, the BBC refused to air it, publicly stating "the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting." It debuted in theaters in 1966 and went on to great acclaim, but remained unseen on British television until 1985.

Directed by Peter Watkins - With Michael Aspel, Peter Graham, Peter Watkins

Stories We Tell(2012)

1h 49min | Documentary
3.5/5 (with 93 votes)

Canadian actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley investigates certain secrets related to her mother, interviewing a group of family members and friends whose reliability varies depending of their implication in the events, which are remembered in different ways; so a trail of questions remains to be answered, because memory is always changing and the discovery of truth often depends on who is telling the tale.

Directed by Sarah Polley - With Rebecca Jenkins

The Legend of Boggy Creek(1972)

1h 27min | Mystery, Horror, Drama
2.5/5 (with 27 votes)

A documentary-style drama based on true accounts of the Fouke Monster in Arkansas, Boggy Creek focuses on the lives of back country people and their culture while chronicling sightings of the monster.

Directed by Charles B. Pierce

Salinger(2013)

2h 5min | Documentary
3.3/5 (with 29 votes)

An in-depth investigation into the private world of the American writer J. D. Salinger (1919-2010), who lived most of his life behind the impenetrable wall of a self-imposed seclusion: how his dramatic experiences during World War II influenced his life and work, his relationships with very young women, his obsessive writing methods, his many literary secrets.

Runway 34(2022)

2h 21min | Thriller, Drama
3.3/5 (with 16 votes)

A flying prodigy, Captain Vikrant Khanna's flight takes a stirring and mysterious trajectory after take-off from an international destination. Concurrently, it follows the tenacious Narayan Vedant in his pursuit to uncover the truth.

Disaster at Chernobyl(2004)

3.9/5 (with 5 votes)

The explosion at Chernobyl was ten times worse than the Hiroshima bomb and was due to a combination of human error and imperfect technology. An account of the sixty critical minutes prior to the explosion of the nuclear power plant on the night of April 26, 1986.

Little Girl Blue(2023)

2.8/5 (with 2 votes)

In 2016, French writer and photographer Carole Achache took her own life. After Carole's death, her daughter Mona Achache, a film director, discovers thousands of photos, letters and recordings that Carole left behind, but these buried secrets make her disappearance even more of an enigma. Through the power of filmmaking and the beauty of incarnation with the help of actress Marion Cotillard, the director brings her mother back to life to retrace her journey and find out who she really was.

Mafia Is Not What It Used to Be(2019)

1h 45min | Documentary
3.8/5 (with 23 votes)

Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 2017. Twenty-five years after the murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone, on May 23, 1992, and Paolo Borsellino, on July 19, 1992; and on the occasion of the tributes held in memory of both heroes, skeptical photographer Letizia Battaglia, chronicler of their titanic combat, criticizes the opportunism of shady characters who, like businessman Ciccio Mira, profit from the commemoration of both tragedies.

Directed by Franco Maresco - With Letizia Battaglia

Elena(2013)

1h 22min | Documentary, Drama
3.7/5 (with 42 votes)

Petra heads to New York in search of her older sister after a long time of being separated. They are both movie actresses and heirs of the wounds of the Brazilian dictatorship. But Petra has only a few clues: home movies, newspaper clippings, a diary...

Directed by Petra Costa

A Very British Sex Scandal(2007)

2.9/5 (with 5 votes)

A Very British Sex Scandal tells the story of Peter Wildeblood, a royal correspondent for the Daily Mail newspaper. He is a closet homosexual and like many gay men at that time, lives in secret as homosexuality is against the law. One evening he meets Eddie McNally, who is on leave from the air force and the pair embark on an affair together. However, it is their weekend at the estate of Lord Edward Montagu which eventually leads to a scandal which rocked modern Britain and led to a reconsideration of, and the eventual decriminilisation of homosexuality.

The Phenix City Story(1955)

1h 40min | Crime, Drama
3.4/5 (with 24 votes)

A crime-busting lawyer and his initially reluctant attorney father take on the forces that run gambling and prostitution in their small Southern town.

The.Three.Stooges(2000)

1h 28min | Comedy, Drama, TV Movie
3.4/5 (with 7 votes)

A biography of the Three Stooges, in which their careers and rise to fame is shown throughout the eyes of their leader, Moe.

Watergate(2018)

4h 30min | Documentary, History
4.5/5 (with 1 vote)

A comprehensive chronicle of the Watergate case, one of the greatest criminal conspiracies of modern politics; from the break-in of the Democratic Party National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel complex in Washington, the center of power in the United States of America, on January 17th, 1972; to the resignation of the Republican President Richard Nixon (1913-1994), on August 8th, 1974; and even far beyond the best-known facts.

Directed by Charles Ferguson

Chuck Norris vs Communism(2015)

1h 18min | Documentary, History
3.6/5 (with 25 votes)

In late eighties, in Ceausescu's Romania, a black market VHS bootlegger and a courageous female translator brought the magic of Western films to the Romanian people and sowed the seeds of a revolution.

Directed by Ilinca Calugareanu

Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie(1997)

2h 24min | Drama
3.5/5 (with 7 votes)

A compilation of episodes from the lives of the bad teens and the homeless of Seoul.

Directed by Jang Seon-u - With Song Kang-ho
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