Docudrama
see all genres ›Whether based on fact or toying with the line between truth and fiction, these tales keep one foot planted in reality's terra firma.
Watch Docudrama Films
Genres / Drama / Realism / Docudrama
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Fitzcarraldo
Werner Herzog's most epically-scaled film was inspired by an actual historical incident of stranger-than-fiction curiosity. In the late 1800s Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald had an entire steamship laboriously transported over a mountain in order to open a trade passage from rubber-rich...
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On the Bowery
ON THE BOWERY chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York's skid row, the Bowery. When the film first opened it 1956, it exploded on the screen, burning away years of Hollywood artifice, jump-starting the post-war American independent...
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Proud Citizen
After winning second place in a playwriting contest Bulgarian Krasimira Stanimirova travels to the rolling hills of Kentucky for the premiere of her auto-biographical, Communist-era play Black Coat. Expecting southern hospitality, Krasi instead finds herself isolated and lonely as she explores...
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The Last Rumba of Papa Montero
A fascinating film on the rhythmic dance genre known as Rumba, LA ULTIMA RUMBA DE PAPA MONTERO dances around the life of Papa Montero, one of the famous rumberos of Cuba, assassinated during carnival. A discovery of Cuban traditions and every day life told through beautiful...
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Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Dieter Dengler knew he needed to fly from the moment when, as a little boy in war-torn Germany, he witnessed a fighter jet nearly clip his apartment building like some "almighty being." Within twenty years he was flying missions in Vietnam for the United States military. He...
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Mock Up on Mu
Notorious Bay Area kino-renegade Craig Baldwin tops his earlier found-footage operas SPECTRES OF THE SPECTRUM and SONIC OUTLAWS with the rapid-fire pulp serial-cum-political-tract piss-take on California's major industrial complexes: military, entertainment and religious. Hitting upon everything...
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Greek Pete
GREEK PETE gives us a glimpse into the world of Pete, a very popular escort voted "Best Escort" at the "World Escort Awards" in Los Angeles in 2008. We meet Pete prior to his fame when he arrives in London with the hope of increasing his business as an escort. All he wants is a nice flat in...
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Russian Ark
Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (THE SUN) broke boundaries with his dreamlike vision of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, RUSSIAN ARK. It's the first feature-length narrative film shot in a single take (on digital video, using a specially designed disc instead of tape). RUSSIAN ARK is shot...
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The Cry of Jazz
Filmed in Chicago and finished in 1959, THE CRY OF JAZZ is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race: a forecast of what he called "the death of jazz." A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it...
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Suitcase of Love and Shame
A forbidden love story played out in a decade that would soon spawn the sexual revolution, SUITCASE OF LOVE AND SHAME reconstructs a mesmerizing and erotic narrative from sixty hours of reel-to-reel audiotape discovered in a suitcase purchased on eBay. In 1964, the couple, Tom...
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City of Life and Death
CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH, a stunning depiction of the Rape of Nanking, is "a film strong enough to change your life" (Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times). Director Lu Chuan based the film on the recorded witness testimony from the real-life survivors of the massacre, meticulously...
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Erebus
On November 28, 1979, an Air New Zealand jet with 257 passengers went missing during a sightseeing tour over Antarctica. Within hours, eleven ordinary police officers were called to duty to face the formidable Mount Erebus. As the police recovered the victims, an investigation team tried to...
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The Arbor
Instead of making a conventional documentary or adapting Andrea Dunbar's play "The Arbor" for the screen, director Clio Barnard has crafted a truly unique work that transcends genre and defies categorization. Following two years conducting audio interviews with Dunbar's family, friends and...
