Movies: Based on memoir or autobiography

The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays ...

After he and his first wife separate, journalist David Sheff struggles to help their teenage son, who goes from experimenting with drugs to becoming devastatingly addicted to methamphetamine....

In 1976, as Argentina descends into violence and chaos, a world-weary English teacher regains his compassion for others thanks to an unlikely friendship with a penguin....

Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and craz...

In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty as well as unexpected kindnesses Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In th...

Colorado Springs, late 1970s. Ron Stallworth, an African American police officer, and Flip Zimmerman, his Jewish colleague, run an undercover operation to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan....

On 15 January 2009, the world witnessed the 'Miracle on the Hudson' when Captain 'Sully' Sullenberger glided his disabled plane onto the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 souls aboard. However, even as Sully was being heralded by the public a...

Tragedy strikes when a woman named Joyce's son falls through the ice on a frozen lake and is trapped underwater for over 15 minutes. After being rushed to the hospital, the 14-year-old boy continues to fight for his life as Joyce, her husband and the...

When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend....

Benjamin has lost his wife and, in a bid to start his life over, purchases a large house that has a zoo – welcome news for his daughter, but his son is not happy about it. The zoo is in need of renovation and Benjamin sets about the work with the hea...

The true story of teen surfer Bethany Hamilton, who lost her arm in a shark attack and courageously overcame all odds to become a champion again, through her sheer determination and unwavering faith....

A high school basketball player’s life turns upside down after free-falling into the harrowing world of drug addiction....

At the dawn of WWII, several men escape from a Russian gulag—to take a perilous and uncertain journey to freedom as they cross deserts, mountains and several nations....

Former Marine Louanne Johnson lands a gig teaching in a pilot program for bright but underachieving teens at a notorious inner-city high school. After having a terrible first day, she decides she must throw decorum to the wind. When Johnson returns t...

Fresh out of rehab, Rona returns to the Orkney Islands—a place both wild and beautiful, right off the Scottish coast. Now 29 and after more than a decade of living life on the edge in London, where she both found and lost love, Rona attempts to come ...

A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape....

An urgent phone call pulls a Yale Law student back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future....

Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer journeys to the Himalayas without his family to head an expedition in 1939. But when World War II breaks out, the arrogant Harrer falls into Allied forces' hands as a prisoner of war. He escapes with a fellow deta...

Testament of Youth is a powerful story of love, war and remembrance, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain, which has become the classic testimony of that war from a woman’s point of view. A searing journey from youthful hopes and drea...

In 2013, Vanessa Springora recounts how she found herself under the influence of a famous writer. In 1986, she was 13; him, almost 50. The victim of a triple predation: sexual, literary, and psychic, there's more beyond her individual story. She ques...