List of 1990s films based on actual events

Main article: List of films based on actual events

1990

• A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia (1990) – British television film depicting the experiences of T. E. Lawrence and Emir Faisal of the Hejaz at the Paris Peace Conference after the end of the First World War
• A Killing in a Small Town (1990) – television film based on the story of Wylie, Texas, housewife Candy Montgomery's murder of Betty Gore in 1980
• After the Shock (1990) – television film about the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that hit San Francisco on October 17, 1989
• An Angel at My Table (1990) – drama film based on Janet Frame's three autobiographies, To the Is-Land (1982), An Angel at My Table (1984), and The Envoy from Mirror City (1984)
• Anything to Survive (1990) – disaster survival film loosely based on the true story of the Wortman family of Prince of Wales Island, Alaska
• Awakenings (1990) – drama film based on British neurologist Oliver Sacks's memoir of the same title, about his discovery of the beneficial effects of the drug L-DOPA, which he administered to catatonic patients, who awakened after decades of catatonia
• Call Me Mr. Brown (1990) – Australian movie based on the Australian Great Plane Robbery of 1971
• Captive of the Desert (French: La captive du désert) (1990) – French drama film based in part on the experiences of Françoise Claustre who was captured by Chadian rebels in 1974, later joined by her husband, and the pair finally released in 1977
• Challenger (1990) – television film based on the events surrounding the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
• Chicago Joe and the Showgirl (1990) – British crime drama film inspired by the real-life Hulten/Jones murder case of 1944, otherwise known as the Cleft Chin Murder
• China Cry (1990) – biographical film set during the rise of the communist state in China, based on the book by Nora Lam, about a young girl, Sung Neng Yee, who is taken to a labour camp, overseen by the sadistic Colonel Cheng
• Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) – about French novelist, playwright, epistolarian and duelist, Cyrano de Bergerac
• The Dreamer of Oz: The L. Frank Baum Story (1990) – television film about L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Ek Doctor Ki Maut (1990) – Indian film based on the life of Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay, an Indian Physician who pioneered the IVF treatment just around the same time when another leading scientist Dr. Robert Edwards was conducting separate experiments in England
• Europa Europa (German: Hitlerjunge Salomon) (1990) – German film based on the true story of author and motivational speaker Solomon Perel's life
• Fall from Grace (1990) – television film about the lives of Jim Bakker and his then-wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, during the 1980s, and depicting the events that led to the PTL scandal and the Bakkers' subsequent downfall
• Forbidden Nights (1990) – made-for-television drama film based on the article The Rocky Course of Love in China, set in Red China in 1979, Judith Shapiro, an American teacher who falls in love with Liang Heng, a Chinese radical, trying to bring political reform to his homeland. She puts all her wishes and dreams away to fit into his ideals, but soon, trouble starts to come
• GoodFellas (1990) – based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, the true story of New York City mobster Henry Hill
• Henry & June (1990) – based on the book Henry and June by Anais Nin, the true story of the Millers, Anais Nin and Ian Hugo
• Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes (1990) – made-for-television historical war drama film about the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima
• I Love You to Death (1990) – black comedy film loosely based on an attempted murder that happened in 1983, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where Frances Toto repeatedly tried to kill her husband, Anthony
• I, the Worst of All (Spanish: Yo, la peor de todas) (1990) – Argentinian film, a biopic on the life of Juana Inés de la Cruz. It was based on Octavio Paz's Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith
• Judgment (1990) – television film about a Louisiana priest accused of molesting young parishioners, and of the family of one of his victims, caught between their loyalty to their son and to their Church
• The Krays (1990) – a trendy take on the criminally insane East End gangsters the Kray twins, who enjoyed a brief, black-humored celebrity during London's Swinging Sixties
• Max and Helen (1990) – drama film based on the 1982 book Max and Helen by Simon Wiesenthal, about his 1962 prosecution of the head of a German factory whom he learns was a murderous labor camp commandant
• Mayumi (1990) – South Korean film based on the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858
• Memphis Belle (1990) – British-American war drama film, a fictionalization of the 1944 documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress about the 25th and last mission of an American Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, the Memphis Belle, based in England during World War II
• Miracle Landing (1990) – made-for-television drama film based on an in-flight accident aboard Aloha Airlines Flight 243 that occurred in April 1988
• Mountains of the Moon (1990) – biographical film depicting the 1857–1858 journey of Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke in their expedition to Central Africa which culminated in Speke's discovery of the source of the Nile River and led to a bitter rivalry between the two men
• The Long Walk Home (1990) – historical drama film based on the Montgomery bus boycott (1955–1956)
• Murder in Mississippi (1990) – television film which dramatized the last weeks of civil rights activists Michael "Mickey" Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, and the events leading up to their disappearance and subsequent murder during Freedom Summer in 1964
• My Father's Glory (French: La Gloire de mon père) (1990) – French film based on the autobiographical novel My Father's Glory by Marcel Pagnol
• My Mother's Castle (French: Le château de ma mère) (1990) – French film, a sequel to My Father's Glory
• The Nasty Girl (German: Das schreckliche Mädchen) (1990) – West German drama film based on the true story of Anna Rosmus (named Sonja Rosenberger in the film), a German high school student, who investigates her town's Nazi past, when the community turns against her
• Pacific Heights (1990) – psychological horror film based on a true story about a couple who rent out an apartment to a crazy scam man
• Reversal of Fortune (1990) – the true story of the unexplained coma of socialite Sunny von Bülow, the subsequent attempted murder trial, and the eventual acquittal of her husband, Claus von Bülow, who was defended by Alan Dershowitz
• The Rose and the Jackal (1990) – made-for-television Western adventure film revolving around Union agent Allan Pinkerton, who falls in love with female spy Rose O'Neal Greenhow
• Secret Weapon (1990) – American-Australian film, the true story of Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician who revealed to the world his country's nuclear weapons capabilities
• Shoot to Kill (1990) – a four-hour drama reconstruction of the events that led to the 1984–86 Stalker Inquiry into the shooting of six terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland in 1982 by a specialist unit of the Royal Ulster Constabulary
• Silent Scream (1990) – biopic film about convicted murderer Larry Winters
• Sudie and Simpson (1990) – television film based on Sarah Flanigan Carter's autobiographical novel about growing up in World War II-era Georgia, Sudie Harrington, a feisty twelve-year-old, befriends Simpson, a gentle black man accused of impropriety with a child
• Too Young to Die? (1990) – television film touching on the debate concerning the death penalty, loosely based on the true story of Attina Marie Cannaday
• Vincent & Theo (1990) – the intense relationship between an art dealer Vincent van Gogh and his alienated older brother Theo
• Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase (1990) – miniseries based on When Rabbit Howls, the autobiography of Truddi Chase, a woman who was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder who allegedly had 92 separate personalities
• Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair (1990) – American-German-Italian-French made-for-television action-drama film based on the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking
• White Hunter Black Heart (1990) – based on the location filming of The African Queen in 1951

1991

• 29th Street (1991) – comedy drama film, adapted from a story by Frank Pesce and James Franciscus, about Frank Pesce Jr. who wins the lottery in 1976
• Absolute Strangers (1991) – made-for-television drama film based on the true story of a husband's controversial decision to have his wife undergo an abortion to aid her recovery after a head-trauma accident had left her comatose
• American Friends (1991) – British comedy film about Francis Ashby, a senior Oxford professor on holiday in the Swiss Alps in 1861. The plot was based on a real-life incident involving Michael Palin's great-grandfather, Edward Palin
• Billy Bathgate (1991) – biographical gangster film starring Dustin Hoffman as real-life gangster Dutch Schultz
• Black Robe (1991) – tells the story of the first contacts between the Huron Indians of Quebec and the Jesuit missionaries from France who came to convert them to Catholicism, and ended up delivering them into the hands of their enemies
• The Boys from St. Petri (Danish: Drengene fra Sankt Petri) (1991) – Danish World War II film inspired by the activities of the Churchill Club
• Bugsy (1991) – the glamorized and sanitized story of mobster Bugsy Siegel, the putative father of the Las Vegas Strip
• Cabeza de Vaca (1991) – Mexican film about the adventures of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1490 – c. 1557), an early Spanish explorer, as he traversed what later became the Southeast United States
• Charuga (1991) – Yugoslav film based on the novel by Ivan Kušan, it tells a true story about legendary Slavonian bandit Jovo Stanisavljević Čaruga
• The Chase (1991) – crime drama television film based on the true story of American bank robber Phillip Hutchinson, who robbed a bank, killed a cop and took a man hostage in a 1988 rampage in Denver, Colorado
• Chernobyl: The Final Warning (1991) – made-for-television disaster drama film chronicling the Chernobyl disaster
• Cry in the Wild: The Taking of Peggy Ann (1991) – television film based on the true story of the abduction of Peggy Ann Bradnick by an ex-convict and ex-mental patient William Diller Hollenbaugh which took place in Shade Gap, Pennsylvania on May 11, 1966
• Deadly Intentions... Again? (1991) – made-for-television thriller film and a sequel to the 1985 film Deadly Intentions about Dr. Charles Raynor
• Dillinger (1991) – television film based on the actual events of the pursuit of American bank robber John Dillinger during the 1930s
• The Doctor (1991) – drama film loosely based on Dr. Edward Rosenbaum's 1988 autobiographical book A Taste of My Own Medicine, about his experience with throat cancer
• The Doors (1991) – based on the life of Jim Morrison, the lead singer for the American rock band The Doors before his death in Paris
• The Haunted (1991) – made-for-television haunted house film depicting the events surrounding the Smurl haunting
• Hear My Song (1991) – comedy film based on the story of Irish tenor Josef Locke
• Il Capitano: A Swedish Requiem (Swedish: Il Capitano) (1991) – Swedish-Finnish biographical drama film about the 1988 Åmsele murders, where a family of three was murdered by Juha Valjakkala over a stolen bicycle
• In a Child's Name (1991) – crime drama mini-series about a custody battle in the state of Indiana for a boy named Andrew Taylor
• The Inner Circle (1991) – drama film by telling the story of Joseph Stalin's private projectionist and KGB officer Ivan Sanchin (real name Alex Ganchin) between 1939 and 1953, the year Stalin died
• Impromptu (1991) – British-American period drama film about the romance between Frédéric Chopin and George Sand in 1830s France
• JFK (1991) – loosely based on New Orleans DA Jim Garrison's late-1960s prosecution of defendant Clay Shaw – in addition to pieces of a half-dozen other conspiracy theories – in the John F. Kennedy assassination
• Let Him Have It (1991) – the story of the murder of a London policeman killed during an attempted break in by Christopher Craig and Derek Bentley; covers the subsequent trial and execution of what has turned out to be an innocent man
• Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story (1991) – drama film based on the true story of Morris Dees, a civil rights lawyer from Alabama, whose Southern Poverty Law Center battles neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan
• Love, Lies and Murder (1991) – two-part miniseries based on the 1985 murder of Linda Bailey Brown and Ann Rule's book If You Really Loved Me
• Lovers (Spanish: Amantes) (1991) – Spanish film noir concerning a widow who engages in blackmailing and persuades a young man to kill his wife
• Mobsters (1991) – crime film detailing the creation of The Commission. Set in New York City, taking place from 1917 to 1931, it is a semi-fictitious account of the rise of Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel
• Murder in New Hampshire: The Pamela Wojas Smart Story (1991) – made-for-television crime drama film based on the true story of Pamela Smart seducing one of her 15-year-old students into sex and to murdering her husband, Gregg Smart, in Derry, New Hampshire
• Never Forget (1991) – made-for-television drama film about Mel Mermelstein, an American holocaust survivor who confronted a Holocaust denial organization's lies in court
• Not Without My Daughter (1991) – the story of American author and public speaker Betty Mahmoody, who was abducted and held hostage with her daughter in Iran
• One Man's War (1991) – television drama film set in Paraguay in 1976, under the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner, it is based on the true story of Joel Filártiga who sought justice for his son's death at the hands of Stroessner's secret police
• Rose Against the Odds (1991) – Australian mini series about the life of Lionel Rose
• Switched at Birth (1991) – the true story of Kimberly Mays and Arlena Twigg, babies switched soon after birth in a Florida hospital in 1978
• Walerjan Wrobel's Homesickness (German: Das Heimweh des Walerjan Wróbel) (1991) – German drama film based on the true story of sixteen-year old Walerjan who is removed from his close-knit Polish family in 1941 by the German occupation
• Walking a Tightrope (French: Les Équilibristes) (1991) – French drama film about Marcel Spadice, a poet who meets Franz-Ali Aoussine, a valet who dreams of becoming a great tightrope walker
• Wife, Mother, Murderer (1991) – made-for-television drama film concerning Alabama murderer Marie Hilley
• Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken (1991) – drama film concerning Sonora Webster Carver, a rider of diving horses
• Without Warning: The James Brady Story (1991) – television film about James Brady, who was shot during the 1981 attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan

1992

• 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) – the very sanitized story of Taino homelands of by the Italian colonialist Christopher Columbus and the effect this had on the indigenous peoples of the Americas
• A Killer Among Friends (1992) – made-for-television film about a mother grieving for her murdered daughter who sets out to find the killer, based on the real life murder of Michele Avila
• A League of Their Own (1992) – based on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during World War II
• A Mother's Right: The Elizabeth Morgan Story (1992) – television film chronicling the story behind the Elizabeth Morgan case, in which a woman is put on trial when she sends her daughter to New Zealand to live with her grandparents, after her ex-husband is not found guilty for abusing their daughter, of which she suspects him
• A Private Matter (1992) – made-for-television drama film based on the true 1962 story of Sherri Finkbine, a resident of Phoenix, Arizona in the first trimester of her fifth pregnancy
• A Thousand Heroes (a.k.a. Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232) (1992) – television film about the crash landing of United Airlines flight 232 at Sioux City, IA in 1989
• Amy Fisher: My Story (1992) – made-for-television drama film based on Amy Fisher's affair with Joey Buttafuoco, and her conviction for aggravated assault for shooting Buttafuoco's wife
• The Babe (1992) – biographical drama film about the life of famed baseball player Babe Ruth
• Baby Snatcher (1992) – television film based on the kidnapping of Rachael Ann White
• Bed of Lies (1992) – made-for-television drama film based on the non-fiction book, Deadly Blessing, which tells the story of Vickie Moore, a low born Texas waitress, who murders her husband Price Daniel Jr.
• Bonnie & Clyde: The True Story (1992) – television film about American criminal couple Bonnie and Clyde
• The Boys of St. Vincent (1992) – Canadian television miniseries based on child sexual abuse scandals that took place at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John's, Newfoundland
• Chaplin (1992) – based on the life of British comedian-actor Charlie Chaplin
• Child of Rage (1992) – biographical drama television film based on the true story of Beth Thomas, who had severe behavioral problems as a result of being sexually abused as a child
• Daens (1992) - Belgian period drama based upon a novel by Louis Paul Boon, telling the true story of Adolf Daens, a Catholic priest in Aalst, Belgium, who strives to improve the miserable working conditions in the local factories
• De Bunker (1992) – Dutch drama film that tells the true story of Dutch resistance fighter Gerrit Kleinveld
• Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster (1992) – drama film depicting the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster off the coast of Alaska in March 1989
• Frankie's House (1992) – British-Australian TV miniseries based on the biography of British photographer Tim Page, especially focusing on his relationship with Sean Flynn - the son of Errol Flynn - during the Vietnam War
• Grave Secrets: The Legacy of Hilltop Drive (1992) – television horror film supposedly based on real events, about a family that experiences disturbing supernatural phenomena after they find out that their house is built on land formerly used as a cemetery
• Hoffa (1992) – based on the life of the Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa before his disappearance in 1975
• In the Best Interest of the Children (1992) – made-for-television fact-based drama film about a woman struggling with manic-depression while raising her five children
• Jonathan: The Boy Nobody Wanted (1992) – made-for-television biographical drama film about Jonathan, a boy with down-syndrome who is left in an institute, and an employee of the institute who battles the system and the parents to have custody over him
• The Last of His Tribe (1992) – made-for-television drama film based on the book Ishi in Two Worlds by Theodora Kroeber which relates the experiences of her husband Alfred L. Kroeber who made friends with Ishi, thought to be the last of his people, the Yahi tribe
• Lorenzo's Oil (1992) – based on the true story of Augusto and Michaela Odone, two parents in a relentless search for a cure for their son Lorenzo's adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD)
• Malcolm X (1992) – epic biographical drama film about the African-American activist Malcolm X
• Newsies (a.k.a. The News Boys) (1992) – musical drama film about the New York City newsboys' strike of 1899
• Pugoy – Hostage: Davao (1992) – Filipino action film based on the 1989 Davao hostage crisis
• Requiem pro panenku (transl. Requiem for a Doll) (1992) – Czech psychological thriller / drama film inspired by a real-life tragedy that cost the lives of 26 mentally disabled girls
• Schtonk! (1992) – German satirical film which retells the story of the 1983 Hitler Diaries hoax
• Something to Live for: The Alison Gertz Story (1992) – television film based on the life of prominent AIDS activist Alison Gertz
• Stay the Night (1992) – television crime-drama mini-series about a teenage boy who has a romantic affair with an older, married woman who together plot to murder her husband
• Taking Back My Life: The Nancy Ziegenmeyer Story (1992) – made-for-television drama film about Nancy Ziegenmeyer, a rape victim who spoke out about her experiences and created the notion that rape and sexual assault are never the victim's fault
• Thunderheart (1992) – Neo-Western mystery film loosely based on events relating to the Wounded Knee incident in 1973
• To Catch a Killer (1992) – two-part television film based on the true story of the pursuit of American serial killer John Wayne Gacy
• The Waterdance (1992) – drama film, a semi-autobiographical story about a young fiction writer who becomes tetraplegic fully paralyzed in a hiking accident and works to rehabilitate his body and mind at a rehabilitation center
• Willing to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story (1992) – television film based on the story of Wanda Holloway

1993

• A Bronx Tale (1993) – crime drama film adapted from Chazz Palminteri's 1989 autobiographical play of the same name, it tells the coming of age story of an Italian-American boy, Calogero, who, after encountering a local Mafia boss, is torn between the temptations of organized crime, racism in his community, and the values of his honest, hardworking father
• A Matter of Justice (1993) – television film based on the murder of Marine Chris Randall Brown
• A Place to Be Loved (1993) – television film about Gregory Kingsley, a boy who is abused by his father and placed with social services by his mother, he ends up taking his mother to court, to have her parental rights revoked, in hopes of being adopted by his foster family
• Alive (1993) – based on the Piers Paul Read book that tells the story of the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in 1972
• The Amy Fisher Story (1993) – television film dramatizing the events surrounding Amy Fisher's teenage affair with Joey Buttafuoco and her conviction for aggravated assault in the shooting of Buttafuoco's wife Mary Jo
• And the Band Played On (1993) – television film docudrama adapted from the book of the same title by Randy Shilts, chronicling the discovery and spread of HIV and AIDS, with emphasis on political infighting and government indifference to what was then perceived as a specifically gay disease
• The Ballad of Little Jo (1993) – Western film inspired by the true story of a society woman who tries to escape the stigma of bearing a child out of wedlock by going out to the West, and living disguised as a man
• Barbarians at the Gate (1993) – television movie based upon the 1989 book by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, about the leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco
• Benito (Italian: Il Giovane Mussolini) (1993) – Italian TV film regarding the story of Benito Mussolini's early rise to power in the Socialist International and his relationship with Angelica Balabanoff
• Beyond the Law (1993) – based on the real-life story of an undercover DEA Agent infiltrating a notorious biker gang involved with drug and gun running
• Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story (1993) – drama film based on the 1993 book Preacher's Girl by Jim Schutze, about the true story of a North Carolina woman who murdered her first husband and a lover with arsenic
• The Blue Exile (Turkish: Mavi sürgün) (1993) – Turkish drama film depicting writer Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı's early years in Bodrum
• Blood In Blood Out (a.k.a. Bound by Honor) (1993) – epic crime drama film following the intertwining lives of three Chicano relatives from 1972 to 1984, based on the true life experiences of poet and screenwriter Jimmy Santiago Baca
• Cannibal! The Musical (a.k.a. Alferd Packer: The Musical) (1993) – independent musical black comedy film, a heavily fabricated version on the true story of Alferd Packer and the sordid details of the trip from Utah to Colorado that left his five fellow travelers dead and partially eaten
• Casualties of Love: The Long Island Lolita Story (1993) – the third made-for-television film based on the story of Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco
• Cool Runnings (1993) – based on the true story of the first Jamaican bobsled team trying to make it to the 1988 Winter Olympics
• Dead Before Dawn (1993) – television film based on a true event involving the publicized mid-1980s bitter divorce of Linda and Robert Edelman
• Deadly Relations (1993) – television film based on the true crime book Deadly Relations: A True Story of Murder in a Suburban Family by Carol Donahue and Shirley Hall, Donahue and Hall are the daughters of Leonard Fagot, a New Orleans attorney whose obsession with controlling his daughters led to him murdering their husbands for hefty insurance pay outs
• Desperate Rescue: The Cathy Mahone Story (1993) – made-for-television drama film based on a true story of a woman who tries to rescue her 7-year-old daughter from the Middle East after she is abducted by her Jordanian father
• Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993) – biographical drama film that follows the life of actor and martial artist Bruce Lee
• The Ernest Green Story (1993) – made-for-television biographical film which follows the true story of Ernest Green (Morris Chestnut) and eight other African-American high-school students (dubbed the "Little Rock Nine") as they embark on their historic journey to integrate Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957
• Fire in the Sky (1993) – biopic science fiction mystery film based on Travis Walton's book The Walton Experience, which describes an alleged extraterrestrial abduction
• Gatica, el mono (1993) – Argentine drama film, a biopic of Argentine boxer José María Gatica
• Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) – historical western film, a fictionalized account of the Apache Wars and how First Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood convinced Apache leader Geronimo to surrender in 1886
• Gettysburg (1993) – based on the story of the Battle of Gettysburg
• Gross Misconduct (1993) – Australian thriller film based on the play Assault With a Deadly Weapon which was written in 1969 by Lance Peters. It had been suggested by a 1955 scandal in Hobart, where university professor Sydney Orr had been sacked from his job on grounds of gross misconduct
• Heaven & Earth (1993) – based on the experiences of Le Ly Hayslip during the Vietnam War
• I Can Make You Love Me (1993) – made-for-television psychological horror film based on the real-life story of American mass murderer Richard Farley, a former employee of ESL Incorporated whose romantic obsession and subsequent stalking of co-worker Laura Black culminated in the mass murder of several co-workers at ESL's headquarters in California
• In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco (1993) – made-for-television action drama film portraying the events leading up to and at the start of the Waco siege
• In the Name of the Father (1993) – biographical courtroom drama film based on the true story of the Guildford Four, four people falsely convicted of the 1974 Guildford pub bombings, which killed four off-duty British soldiers and a civilian
• Jonah Who Lived in the Whale (Italian: Jona che visse nella balena) (1993) – Italian-French drama film based on the autobiographical novel by the writer Jona Oberski entitled Childhood, focused on the drama of the Holocaust
• Judgment Day: The John List Story (1993) – made-for-television crime drama film, a fictionalized version of the crime of John List, who killed his mother, wife, and three children in 1971, before assuming a new identity, and eluding capture, for over 17 years
• Just a Matter of Duty (German: Die Denunziantin) (1993) – German drama film about a German war crimes trial following World War II
• Life with Billy (1993) – Canadian television film based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Brian Vallée
• Lost in the Wild (a.k.a. Nurses on the Line: The Crash of Flight 7) (1993) – made-for-television drama film about a plane that plummets from the sky above the jungles of Mexico
• M. Butterfly (1993) – romantic drama film based on David Henry Hwang's play of the same name, loosely based on true events about a French diplomat assigned to Beijing, China, in the 1960s
• Money for Nothing (1993) – biographical comedy crime film based on the 1986 Philadelphia Inquirer article "Finders Keepers" by Mark Bowden. The film is loosely based on the life of Joey Coyle (Cusack), who, in 1981, discovered $1.2 million that had fallen out of an armored van in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Murder in the Heartland (1993) – two-part television miniseries based on the 1957–58 murder spree carried out by 19-year-old Charles Starkweather and 14-year old Caril Ann Fugate throughout Nebraska and Wyoming
• Ordeal in the Arctic (1993) – television film depicting the accident of Canadian Forces Lockheed CC-130E Hercules (130322), from 435 Transport and Rescue Squadron (a part of Operation Boxtop), that struck a rocky slope and crashed on Ellesmere Island, October 30, 1991
• The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom (1993) – television film based on the story of Wanda Holloway
• Precious Victims (1993) – television film based on the book of the same name by Charles Bosworth Jr. and Don W. Weber
• The Puppetmaster (Mandarin: Xi meng ren sheng) (1993) – Taiwanese film about the story of Li Tian-lu, who becomes a master puppeteer but is faced with demands to turn his skills to propaganda during Japanese-ruled Taiwan from pre-1896 to the end of World War II in 1945
• The Rainbow Warrior (1993) – made-for-television drama film based on the true story of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, which was sunk in Waitematā Harbour in Auckland, New Zealand on 10 July 1985 by French DGSE operatives, when it was preparing for a Pacific voyage to protest against French nuclear testing
• Rudy (1993) – based on the story of Notre Dame football walk-on Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger
• Sakay (1993) – Filipino historical drama film portraying the latter part of the life of Filipino patriot and hero Macario Sakay, who was declared an outlaw and a criminal for continuing hostilities against the United States after the "official" end of the Philippine–American War
• Sardar (1993) – based on life of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one of India's greatest freedom fighters and the first Home Minister of India
• Scattered Dreams (1993) – made for TV drama film about a couple that get arrested for a crime they didn't commit
• Schindler's List (1993) – adapted from the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally about Oskar Schindler and his actions to save over 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust
• Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993) – drama film based on the life of prodigy chess player Joshua Waitzkin
• Shadowlands (1993) – biographical film about the relationship between writer and Oxford academic C.S. Lewis and American poet Joy Davidman, their marriage, and her death from cancer
• Six Degrees of Separation (1993) – comedy drama film inspired by the real-life story of David Hampton, a con man and robber who convinced a number of people in the 1980s that he was the son of actor Sidney Poitier
• Tango Feroz (Spanish: Tango Feroz: la leyenda de Tanguito) (1993) – Argentine drama musical film loosely based in the life of Tanguito, one of the first artists of Argentine rock
• Telling Secrets (a.k.a. Contract for Murder) (1993) – television film based on the true story of Joy Aylor, who plots the murder of her adulterous husband's mistress
• This Boy's Life (1993) – biographical coming-of-age drama film based on the memoir of the same name by American author Tobias Wolff
• Tombstone (1993) – story of Wyatt Earp
• The Trust (1993) – depicting the story of businessman William Marsh Rice's mysterious death in 1900 and the people involved with it
• What's Love Got to Do with It (1993) – biographical film based on the life of American-born singer Tina Turner
• Wide-Eyed and Legless (1993) – made-for-TV British drama film based on the 1989 book Diana's Story by Deric Longden, that tells the story of his marriage to his wife, Diana, who contracts a chronic, degenerative illness that medical officials were unable to understand at the time

1994

• 8 Seconds (1994) – based on the story of American rodeo legend Lane Frost who died from injuries sustained riding a bull at the 1989 Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo
• A Friend to Die For (a.k.a. Death of a Cheerleader) (1994) – psychological thriller television film based on the real-life murder of Kirsten Costas, who was killed by her classmate, Bernadette Protti, in 1984
• A Time to Heal (1994) – television film based on the true story of a young mother's painful recovery from a stroke
• Against the Wall (1994) – action historical drama television film based on the 1971 Attica Prison riot
• And Then There Was One (1994) – television film about the true story of a family dealing with AIDS
• Andre (1994) – comedy drama film about a child's encounter with a seal, an adaptation of the book A Seal Called Andre, which in turn was based on a true story
• Armed and Innocent (1994) – crime/thriller made-for-TV film based on the true story of an eleven-year-old boy, who was left at home alone, kills two intruders in self defense
• Assault at West Point: The Court-Martial of Johnson Whittaker (1994) – made-for-TV drama film about Johnson Chesnut Whittaker, one of the first black cadets at West Point, and the trial that followed an assault he suffered in 1880
• The Babymaker: The Dr. Cecil Jacobson Story (1994) – made-for-television drama film based on the true story of Cecil Jacobson, who used his own sperm to impregnate patients, without informing them
• Bandit Queen (1994) – Indian biographical film based on the life of female rights activist, bandit and politician Phoolan Devi
• The Burning Season (1994) – television film chronicling Chico Mendes' fight to protect the rainforest
• Cobb (1994) – biographical film starring Tommy Lee Jones as baseball player Ty Cobb, based on a book by Al Stump
• Cries from the Heart (1994) – made-for-television drama film about a seven-year-old autistic boy who has trouble with verbalization but a real talent for technology, who uses a computer to plead for help after being molested at school
• The Diary of Evelyn Lau (1994) – Canadian television film about Evelyn Lau, a teenager who runs away from home and becomes a drug-addicted prostitute
• Doomsday Gun (1994) – television film dramatizing the life of Canadian supergun designer Dr. Gerald Bull and his involvement in Project Babylon, Saddam Hussein's plan to build a supergun with a range of over 500 miles
• Ed Wood (1994) – based on the story of film director Edward D. Wood Jr., starring Johnny Depp as Ed Wood
• Farinelli (1994) – biographical drama film centering on the life and career of the 18th-century Italian opera singer Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli, considered the greatest castrato singer of all time; as well as his relationship with his brother, composer Riccardo Broschi
• The Fatima Buen Story (1994) – Philippine biographical crime drama film based on Fatima Buen, a complex woman jailed for illegal recruitment
• For the Love of Aaron (1994) – Canadian television film, based on the true story of Margaret Gibson, a noted Canadian writer who suffered from bipolar disorder, the film dramatizes her custody battle for her son Aaron after her divorce
• For the Love of Nancy (1994) – made-for-television drama film based on Nancy Walsh, a graduating senior who suffers from anorexia nervosa
• Getting Gotti (1994) – TV film centering on a Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney named Diane Giacalone, and her attempts to build a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case against John Gotti and the Gambino crime family
• The Glass Shield (1994) – crime drama film based on a true story about the first black cop to be assigned to a California sheriff's department
• Heavenly Creatures (1994) – based on the true story of Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, principals in the 1954 Parker–Hulme murder case in New Zealand
• I Can't Sleep (French: J'ai pas sommeil) (1994) – French drama film loosely inspired by the murders committed by Thierry Paulin
• It Could Happen to You (1994) – romantic comedy-drama film based on the true story of a New York City police officer who wins the lottery and splits his winnings with a waitress
• Kabloonak (1994) – Canadian drama film about the making of Nanook of the North, a 1922 film about an Inuk called Nanook and his family in the Canadian Arctic
• La Reine Margot (transl. Queen Margot) (1994) – French period film based on Alexandre Dumas' novel about Catholics and Protestant Huguenots fighting over political control of France
• Ladybird, Ladybird (1994) – British drama film about a British woman's dispute with Social Services over the care and custody of her four children
• Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee (1994) – based on Mary Crow Dog's autobiography Lakota Woman, wherein she accounts her troubled youth, involvement with the American Indian Movement, and relationship with Lakota medicine man and activist Leonard Crow Dog
• The Madness of King George (1994) – the true story of King George III's deteriorating mental health, which stemmed from porphyria; based on the play The Madness of George III
• Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills (1994) – television film about Lyle and Erik Menéndez, who murdered their parents in 1989
• Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) – about writer Dorothy Parker and the members of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers, actors and critics who met almost daily from 1919 to 1929 at Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel
• Octobre (1994) – Quebec film telling a fictionalized version of the October Crisis from the point of view of the Chénier Cell, the FLQ terrorist cell who in 1970 kidnapped and murdered Quebec minister and Deputy Premier Pierre Laporte
• One of Her Own (1994) – television film based on a true story of a rookie policewoman who was raped by a fellow officer
• Princess Caraboo (1994) – based on the story of Mary Baker (née Willcocks: b. 11 November 1792) who was a noted imposter who fooled an entire British town for months that she was a princess from a far off kingdom.
• The Quality of Mercy (German: Hasenjagd – Vor lauter Feigheit gibt es kein Erbarmen) (1994) – Austrian film, a dramatization of the events surrounding the Mühlviertler Hasenjagd, a Nazi war crime that took place near Linz, in the Mühlviertel region of Upper Austria, just before the end of the Second World War
• Quiz Show (1994) – adapted from a book by Richard N. Goodwin about the real-life American television quiz show scandals of the 1950s
• Roswell (1994) – television film based on a supposedly true story about the Roswell UFO incident, the supposed U.S. military capture of a flying saucer and its alien crew following a crash near the town of Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947
• Sister My Sister (1994) – British film based on a true incident in Le Mans, France in 1933 called the Papin murder case, where two sisters brutally murdered their employer and her daughter
• Snowbound: The Jim and Jennifer Stolpa Story (1994) – television film based on a true story, Jim and Jennifer Stolpa and their infant son Clayton are 500 miles from their home in Castro Valley, California, when they lose their way and are stranded in an endless wilderness of deep snow in northern Nevada, east of Cedarville, California
• Tarzan of Manisa (Turkish: Manisa Tarzanı) (1994) – Turkish biographical drama film about Ahmet bin Carlak, also known as the "Tarzan of Manisa" 1899–1963
• Terror in the Night (1994) – made-for-television thriller film based on the story of Tom Cross and his girlfriend, Robin Andrews, who are awakened by "police officer" Lonnie Carter, a psychotic brutal murderer on-the-loose with his girlfriend Tina and her two children, who claims that he is taking them to police headquarters, but instead kidnaps and terrorizes them
• Tom & Viv (1994) – based on the turbulent relationship between T.S. Eliot and his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot
• Tonya and Nancy: The Inside Story (1994) – made-for-television biographical satirical-drama film focusing on the 1994 Cobo Arena attack on Nancy Kerrigan and the extensive media coverage surrounding the infamous incident
• Ultimate Betrayal (1994) – made-for-television drama film based on a true story about two sisters who sue their father for incest and child abuse
• White Mile (1994) – made-for-television thriller-drama film loosely based on a rafting accident, on August 1, 1987, on the White Mile rapids in the Bidwell Canyon section of the Chilko River, in the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada
• Wyatt Earp (1994) – biographical Western film about Old West lawman and gambler Wyatt Earp (1848–1929)

1995

• A Single Spark (Korean: Jeon tae-il) (1995) – South Korean biographical drama film about Jeon Tae-il, a worker who protested labor conditions through self-immolation
• Across the Sea of Time (1995) – IMAX 3D adventure film about a young Russian boy who travels to the United States in search of his ancestor's family
• The Affair (1995) – romantic drama television film about an African-American soldier in the United States Army who is deployed to England during World War II and has an affair with a British officer's wife
• Apollo 13 (1995) – the story of the Apollo 13 lunar mission, based on the book Lost Moon by Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger
• The Bait (French: L'appât) (1995) – French film about two boys and a girl who commit a murder, with the girl acting as the "bait", the film is based on the 1990 book of the same name by Morgan Sportès, which is in turn based on the "Valérie Subra affair", a true event that happened in 1984
• Balto (1995) – British-American live-action/animated adventure film loosely based on a true story about the dog of the same name who helped save children infected with diphtheria in the 1925 serum run to Nome
• The Basketball Diaries (1995) – based on the autobiographical book of the same name by author and musician Jim Carroll, an edited collection of diaries he kept between the ages of 12 and 16, it tells the story of Carroll's teenage years as a promising high school basketball player and writer who develops an addiction to heroin
• Bombay (1995) – Indian Tamil bilingual film centered on the 1993 Bombay riots
• Braveheart (1995) – historical drama war film based on the story of William Wallace of Scotland, a 13th-century Scottish warrior who led the Scots in the First War of Scottish Independence against King Edward I of England
• Butterbox Babies (1995) – adapted from the book Butterbox Babies by Bette L. Cahill, based on the true story of the Ideal Maternity Home, a home for unwed pregnant mothers, during the Great Depression and Second World War. The home made millions from the illegal adoption of illegitimate babies during the 1930s and 1940s
• Cafe Society (1995) – mystery film about New York society playboy Mickey Jelke who inherits a large sum of money and soon becomes embroiled in shadowy web of political exploitation and scandal in 1952
• Carrington (1995) – chronicles the relationship between English painter Dora Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey
• Casino (1995) – epic crime film telling the story of the last mafia-run casino in Las Vegas, the fictional Tangiers, based on Frank Rosenthal, who ran the Stardust, Fremont, and Hacienda casinos in Las Vegas for the Chicago Outfit from the 1970s until the early 1980s
• Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story (1995) – television film about the controversial nurse Margaret Sanger who campaigned in the earlier decades of the 20th century in the United States for women's birth control
• Citizen X (1995) – television film based on the investigation into murders committed by Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo
• Dangerous Minds (1995) – drama film based on the story of teacher LouAnne Johnson who takes on the challenge of an unruly class and wins them over
• Dead Man Walking (1995) – crime drama film adapted from the 1993 non-fiction book of the same name, Sister Helen Prejean establishes a special relationship with Matthew Poncelet, a character based on convicted murderers Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie
• Deathmaker (German: Der Totmacher) (1995) – German film based on the transcripts of the interrogation of the notorious serial killer Fritz Haarmann
• Dead Presidents (1995) – crime thriller film about the life of Anthony Curtis, focusing on his teenage years as a high school graduate and his experiences during the Vietnam War, based partly on the real-life experiences of Haywood T. Kirkland (a.k.a. Ari S. Merretazon)
• Deadly Whispers (1995) – television film depicting a father with dissociative identity disorder who murders his daughter. Based on Ted Schwarz's book of the same name, it is a fictionalized account of the murder of Kathy Bonney in 1987
• Escape from Terror: The Teresa Stamper Story (1995) – crime drama television film based on a true story from Unsolved Mysteries
• Eskapo (1995) – Filipino historical thriller film about Eugenio "Geny" López Jr. and Sergio "Serge" Osmeña III who are separately arrested based on false accusations of attempts to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s
• Falling from the Sky: Flight 174 (1995) – made-for-television film based on the real-life events of Air Canada Flight 143, nicknamed the "Gimli Glider"
• Heat (1995) – loosely based on Chicago police officer Chuck Adamson's pursuit of career criminal Neil McCauley in the 1960s
• If Someone Had Known (1995) – crime drama television film based on a young wife and mother who is abused by her husband
• Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1995) – based on a real-life court case, the film finds members of the McMartin family on trial for alleged sexual molestation and abuse of children at their well-regarded preschool
• The Infiltrator (1995) – thriller film based on the book In Hitler's Shadow: An Israeli's Journey Inside Germany's Neo-Nazi Movement by Yaron Svoray and Nick Taylor about an Israeli freelance journalist who travels to Germany in the early 1990s and uncovers a pervasive underground Neo-Nazi faction with the intent to bring Nazism back to the forefront in Germany
• Killer: A Journal of Murder (1995) – drama film about the 1920s serial killer Carl Panzram, who befriended prison guard Henry Lesser
• Les Milles (1995) – French drama film about Germans, Jews, Communists or opponents of Nazism who had taken refuge in France, who were interned in the Camp des Milles, near Aix-en-Provence and get on a train to evacuate to Bayonne in May 1940
• Losing Isaiah (1995) – drama film based on the novel of the same name by Seth Margolis, about the biological and adoptive mothers of a young boy who are involved in a bitter, controversial custody battle
• Murder in the First (1995) – legal drama film about petty criminal Henri Young, who is put on trial for murder in the first degree
• Nixon (1995) – the story of American President Richard Nixon
• Operation Dumbo Drop (1995) – comedy film based on a true story by United States Army Major Jim Morris, about Green Berets during the Vietnam War in 1968 who attempt to transport an elephant through jungle terrain to a local South Vietnamese village, which in turn helps American forces monitor Viet Cong activity
• Pocahontas (1995) – highly fictionalized film about the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, the first feature-length animated film by Disney to be based on historical events
• Policemen (Italian: Poliziotti) (1995) – Italian crime-drama film based on a policeman, Vincenzo Rizzi, who had committed suicide while in jail
• Ravan Raaj: A True Story (1995) – Hindi film based on a doctor's story, centered on kidney smugglers and a serial killer
• Red Cherry (Chinese: Hong ying tao) (1995) – Chinese film based on the true story of Chuchu, a 13-year-old Chinese girl, and Luo Xiaoman, a 12-year-old Chinese boy, who were sent to Moscow, Russia in the 1940s and enrolled into an international boarding school
• Savate (1995) – martial arts Western film promoted as the allegedly true story of the world's first kickboxer
• She Fought Alone (1995) – television film about a girl in a small rural town who gets raped by a football player
• Stonewall (1995) – British-American historical comedy drama film inspired by the memoir of the same title by gay historian Martin Duberman, Stonewall a fictionalized account of the weeks leading up to the Stonewall riots, a seminal event in the modern American gay rights movement
• Tyson (1995) – television film based on the life of American heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson
• Who Killed Pasolini? (Italian: Pasolini, un delitto italiano) (1995) – Italian crime-drama film depicting the trial against Pino Pelosi, who was charged with the murder of artist and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini
• Wild Bill (1995) – Western film about the last days of legendary lawman Wild Bill Hickok
• The Young Poisoner's Handbook (1995) – British-German-French dark comedy based on the life of Graham Young, more commonly known as "The Teacup Murderer" of the 1970s

1996

• After Jimmy (1996) – made-for-television drama film based on a teenage boy's suicide
• Apollo 11 (1996) – television film about the Apollo 11 spaceflight
• Basquiat (1996) – biographical drama film based on the life of American postmodernist/neo expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat
• Bastard Out of Carolina (1996) – based on real-life events of child abuse from the semi-autobiographical book of the same title by Dorothy Allison
• Born Free: A New Adventure (1996) – made-for-television adventure film based on the real life of the lioness Elsa
• Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day (1996) – drama film about a Chinese-American's attempt at saving a railroad in post-World War II California
• Crime of the Century (1996) – television film, a dramatization of the Lindbergh kidnapping of 1932
• The Crucible (1996) – drama based on the Salem witch trials between 1692 and 1693, written by Arthur Miller and based on his play of the same name
• Dead Heart (1996) – Australian film based on the true story of an aboriginal who killed someone in the 1930s for traditional reasons
• Deadly Voyage (1996) – television film about Kingsley Ofosu, the sole survivor of a group of nine African stowaways murdered on the cargo ship MC Ruby in 1992
• Deep Crimson (Spanish: Profundo Carmesí) (1996) – Mexican crime film, a dramatization of the story of "Lonely Hearts Killers", Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, who committed a string of murders of women in the 1940s
• The Dentist (1996) – horror film based on real-life dentist/serial killer Nick Rex
• Devil's Island (Icelandic: Djöflaeyjan) (1996) – Icelandic dark comedy film depicting a group of otherwise homeless families living in barracks abandoned by the US Air Force after the Second World War
• The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca (1996) – Spanish-American drama-biographical film based on a book by Ian Gibson about the life and murder of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca
• Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story (1996) – independent film about the life of Dorothy Day, the journalist turned social activist and founder of the Catholic Worker newspaper
• Fly Away Home (1996) – adapted from the book by Bill Lishman, dramatizing the actual experiences of Bill Lishman who in 1986 started training geese to follow his ultralight and succeeded in leading their migration in 1993
• For My Daughter's Honor (1996) – made-for-television drama film about a popular coach, Lynn Stroud (named Pete Nash in the film), who is accused of having a sexual relation with a 14 year old, one of his school's pupils
• Forgotten Sins (1996) – made-for-television drama film based on Lawrence Wright's New Yorker articles and his book Remembering Satan, which was in turn based on the actual case of Paul Ingram
• Frozen (Chinese: Jidu hanleng) (1996) – Chinese film supposedly based on a true story, about young performance artist, Qi Lei, who attempts to create a masterpiece centered on the theme of death. After two "acts" where he simulates death, he decides that his final act will be a true suicide through hypothermia
• The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) – fictionalized account about two lions that attacked and killed workers in Tsavo, Kenya during the building of the African Uganda-Mombasa Railway in 1898, killing 130 people over a nine-month period
• Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) – based on the 1994 third retrial of Byron De La Beckwith, white supremacist accused of the 1963 assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers
• Giant Mine (1996) – Canadian television film, which dramatizes the events of the 1992 Giant Mine labour dispute and the subsequent bomb explosion which killed nine replacement workers
• Gone in the Night (1996) – television film about the Jaclyn Dowaliby murder case
• Hillsborough (1996) – television film set between 1989 and 1991, a dramatization of the Hillsborough disaster, which saw 96 football supporters lose their lives at Hillsborough in Sheffield
• Hostile Advances: The Kerry Ellison Story (1996) – made-for-television drama film based on Ellison v. Brady, a landmark sexual harassment case
• I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) – based on the life of Valerie Solanas and her relationship with Andy Warhol
• In Cold Blood (1996) – TV miniseries based on Truman Capote's true crime book of the same name that follows a pair of ex-cons who murdered a respected Midwestern rancher and his family
• Intimate Relations (1996) – Canadian-British film based on the true story of Albert Goozee, who was put on trial in 1956 in England after his 53-year-old landlady, Mrs. Lydia Leakey, and her 14-year-old daughter, Norma, were found murdered
• It's My Party (1996) – drama film based on the true events of the death of Harry Stein, accomplished architect and designer, who was actually director Randal Kleiser's ex-lover. Stein's actual farewell party was held in 1992
• Jerusalem (1996) – Swedish/Danish/Norwegian production based on the two-part novel Jerusalem by Selma Lagerlöf, inspired by real events from the end of the 19th century, a time when many people left Europe to find a better life abroad
• Justice for Annie: A Moment of Truth Movie (1996) – American/Canadian made-for-television drama film based on the case of Deana Hubbard Wild (named Annie Mills Carman in the film), who was pushed to her death from a cliff for insurance money
• The Late Shift (1996) – television film based on the book of the same name by The New York Times media reporter Bill Carter, about the rivalry between David Letterman and Jay Leno
• Michael Collins (1996) – based on the life of IRA leader Michael Collins
• Mr. and Mrs. Loving (1996) – television film based on a true story, but with fictionalized parts, about the effects of interracial marriage in the 1960s
• No One Would Tell (1996) – teen crime drama television film based on the true story of Jamie Fuller, a 16-year-old high school student who murdered his 14-year-old girlfriend, Amy Carnevale, on August 23, 1991, in Beverly, Massachusetts
• Normal Life (1996) – crime drama film based on the real lives of husband-and-wife bank robbers, Jeffrey and Jill Erickson
• The One That Got Away (1996) – South African television film based on the book of the same name by Chris Ryan telling the true story of a Special Air Service patrol during the Gulf War in 1991
• The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) – biographical drama film chronicling the rise of pornographer Larry Flynt and his subsequent clash with religious institutions and the law
• Public Enemies (1996) – centering on the 1930s figure Ma Barker and her criminal sons
• Race the Sun (1996) – comedy drama film loosely based on the true story of the Konawaena High School Solar Car Team, which finished 18th in the 1990 World Solar Challenge and first place among high school entries
• Rowing Through (1996) – Canadian/Japanese co-produced drama film based on David Halberstam's book The Amateurs, the film centers on American sculler Tiff Wood as he tries to qualify for the 1984 Summer Olympics
• Seduced by Madness: The Diane Borchardt Story (1996) – television film based roughly on real-life events, the film recounts the story of Wisconsin teacher Diane Borchardt, who hired teen students first to spy on her cheating husband and later to kill him
• The Siege at Ruby Ridge (1996) – drama television film about the confrontation between the family of Randy Weaver and the US federal government at Ruby Ridge in 1992
• Some Mother's Son (1996) – Irish/American film based on the true story of the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze Prison, in Northern Ireland
• To Brave Alaska (1996) – made-for-TV adventure film about a young couple who attempt to survive in the rough Alaskan wilderness
• Twisted Desire (1996) – drama/thriller film based on the 1990 murders of the parents of 14-year-old Jessica Wiseman
• Unabomber: The True Story (1996) – made-for-television biographical film about Ted Kaczynski, who is also known as the Unabomber
• Unforgivable (1996) – made-for-television drama film about Paul Hegstrom, a ferociously violent man who is forced to join a group therapy program
• White Squall (1996) – based on the fate of the brigantine Albatross, which sank May 2, 1961, allegedly because of a white squall
• The Whole Wide World (1996) – biographical drama film about Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian

1997

• ...First Do No Harm (1997) – made-for-television drama film about a boy whose severe epilepsy, unresponsive to medications with terrible side effects, is controlled by the ketogenic diet. Aspects of the story mirror director Jim Abrahams' own experience with his son Charlie
• Amistad (1997) – based on the true story of a slave mutiny that took place aboard the ship La Amistad in 1839, and the legal battle that followed
• An Eyewitness Account (Italian: Testimone a rischio) (1997) – Italian thriller-drama film based on real life events of Sicilian Mafia hit eyewitness Piero Nava
• Anastasia (1997) – animated musical drama film loosely based on the story of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia
• Any Mother's Son (1997) – television drama film based on the true story of US Navy Petty Officer Allen Schindler, who is murdered by two of his fellow seamen while on shore leave from his post in Japan
• The Arrow (1997) – four-hour television miniseries about Crawford Gordon, an experienced wartime production leader after World War II and president of Avro Canada during its attempt to produce the Avro Arrow supersonic jet interceptor aircraft
• Boogie Nights (1997) – loosely based on the life of porn star John Holmes
• Border (1997) – Indian war film based on the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971
• Buddy (1997) – family comedy film based on the life of a gorilla called Massa with elements of Mrs. Gertrude "Trudy" Lintz's other gorilla Gargantua (who was called "Buddy" at the time)
• Comedian Harmonists (1997) – German film about the popular German vocal group the Comedian Harmonists of the 1920s and 1930s
• Crowned and Dangerous (1997) – made-for-TV film about the murder of a beauty queen, and the investigation that revealed the suspects to be a former lover, a rival contestant, and a stage mother
• David (1997) – television film about King David, as told in the biblical story
• Daughters (a.k.a. Our Mother's Murder) (1997) – made-for-TV drama film about the murder of publishing heiress Anne Scripps
• Detention: The Siege at Johnson High (1997) – made-for-television thriller drama film based on the 1992 Lindhurst High School shooting and siege that resulted in the death of four people
• The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca (1997) – Spanish-American biographical drama film based on a book by Ian Gibson about the life and murder of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca
• Donnie Brasco (1997) – loosely based on Joseph D. Pistone, the FBI agent who successfully infiltrated the Bonanno crime family in New York City during the 1970s
• FairyTale: A True Story (1997) – French-American fantasy drama film loosely based on the story of the Cottingley Fairies in the year 1917 in England, about two children who take a photograph soon believed to be the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies
• Fever Pitch (1997) – British film loosely based on Nick Hornby's best-selling memoir, Fever Pitch: A Fan's Life (1992)
• First Time Felon (1997) – based on the true story of young Chicago drug dealer Greg Yance
• For All - O Trampolim da Vitória (transl. For All: Springboard to Victory) (1997) – Brazilian comedy drama about a US established military base in Natal, Brazil during World War II
• Four Days in September (Portuguese: O Que É Isso, Companheiro?) (1997) – Brazilian thriller film that tells the true story of the abduction of American ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick in 1969 by the MR-8 group, adapted from the book by Fernando Gabeira
• Gaston's War (1997) – Belgian drama film based on a novel by Allan Mayer, the film is set many decades after the Second World War, and tells the story of a Belgian resistance fighter, Gaston Vandermeerssche, who tries to discover who betrayed them to the Nazis
• Hav Plenty (1997) – romantic comedy film based on an eventful weekend in the life of Lee Plenty, based on the true story of Christopher Scott Cherot's unrequited romance with Def Jam A&R executive Drew Dixon
• Hoodlum (1997) – crime drama film, a fictionalized account of the gang war between the Italian/Jewish mafia alliance and the black gangsters of Harlem that took place in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The film concentrated on Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, Dutch Schultz, and Charles "Lucky" Luciano
• Iruvar (1997) – Indian Tamil political drama based on the life of Indian actor, director, producer and politician M. G. Ramachandran and Indian politician M. Karunanidhi
• Kundun (1997) – based on the life of the Dalai Lama, the exiled political and spiritual leader of Tibet
• Love's Deadly Triangle: The Texas Cadet Murder (1997) – made-for-television drama film based on the real life murder of Adrianne Jones by Diane Zamora in Texas
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) – mystery thriller film based on John Berendt's 1994 book of the same name and follows the story of an antiques dealer on trial for the murder of a male prostitute, part fact and part fiction
• Mrs. Brown (1997) – based on the relationship between Queen Victoria and Scottish servant John Brown following the death of Prince Albert
• Nattbuss 807 (transl. Night Bus 807) (1997) – Swedish thriller film based on the real murder of a young skinhead in 1992
• No Child of Mine (1997) – British drama-television film about the true case of a girl named Kerry who was sexually abused throughout her childhood
• Paradise Road (1997) – war film about a group of English, American, Australian, and Dutch women imprisoned by the Japanese in Sumatra during World War II
• Path to Paradise: The Untold Story of the World Trade Center Bombing (1997) – television film depicting the events surrounding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
• The Place of the Dead (1997) – British television film about a British Army expedition in Malaysia that made headlines in 1994 when it went badly wrong
• Prefontaine (1997) – based on the life of Olympic hopeful Steve Prefontaine, a middle and long-distance runner who competed in the 1972 Summer Olympics and died at age 24 in a car accident
• Prison of Secrets (1997) – television film based on the true story of a female prison inmate who fights for women's rights while still in jail
• Private Parts (1997) – based on eccentric radio DJ Howard Stern's 1993 autobiography of the same name
• Rosewood (1997) – dramatization of a 1923 racist lynch mob attack on an African American community
• The Sarah Balabagan Story (1997) – Filipino biopic revolving around the case of OFW, Sarah Balabagan who was sentenced to death in the United Arab Emirates
• Selena (1997) – based on the life of Mexican-American singer Selena Quintanilla Perez
• Seven Years in Tibet (1997) – based on the autobiographical travel book written by Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, based on his real life experiences in Tibet between 1944 and 1951 during World War II and the interim period before the Communist Chinese People's Liberation Army resumed control of Tibet in 1950
• Shanghai 1937 (1997) – German two-part miniseries about westerners staying at a popular hotel in Shanghai during the Japanese invasion of China also known as the Second Sino-Japanese War begins in 1937
• Sleeping with the Devil (1997) – television film based upon the novel of the same name by Suzanne Finstad, about a nurse who gets in a romantic relationship with a billionaire
• The Sleepwalker Killing (1997) – TV movie based on a popular real-life case from the Unsolved Mysteries television series
• Stolen Women, Captured Hearts (1997) – made-for-television film loosely based on Anna Morgan, a woman living on the plains of Kansas in 1868 who is kidnapped by a band of Lakota Indians
• Subway Stories (1997) – television film, a dramatization of ten stories of New York City subway riders
• Titanic (1997) – epic romance disaster film incorporating both historical and fictionalized aspects, it is based on accounts of the sinking of the RMS Titanic
• Vasiliki (1997) – Greek film about Vasiliki, the wife of a Greek communist guerrilla during the Greek Civil War
• Wild America (1997) – adventure comedy film based on the life of wildlife documentarian Marty Stouffer
• Wilde (1997) – British biographical film based on events in the life of Irish writer Oscar Wilde

1998

• 23 (1998) – German drama thriller film about a young hacker who died on 23 May 1989, a presumed suicide
• A Bright Shining Lie (1998) – made-for-television war drama film based on Neil Sheehan's book of the same name and the true story of John Paul Vann's experience in the Vietnam War
• A Civil Action (1998) – based on the book of the same name by Jonathan Harr, telling the true story of environmental pollution that took place in Woburn, Massachusetts, in the 1980s
• At the End of the Day: The Sue Rodriguez Story (1998) – Canadian television film about the life of Canadian right to die advocate Sue Rodriguez
• The Apple (Persian: Sib) (1998) – Iranian film based on the true story of two daughters who are locked up by their parents for eleven years, when their neighbors call social workers to investigate the situation, the girls are released
• The Brylcreem Boys (1998) – British romantic comedy film set in Ireland against the extraordinary neutrality arrangements in Ireland during World War II
• Daun di Atas Bantal (transl. Leaf on a Pillow) (1998) – Indonesian film based on true stories of the lives of three street boys in Yogyakarta in Java, Indonesia
• Elizabeth (1998) – centered on the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I of England and her difficult task of learning what is necessary to be a monarch
• Escape: Human Cargo (1998) – action drama film based on the true story of an American businessman who loses his passport and exit visa in Saudi Arabia
• Fifteen and Pregnant (1998) – based on the true story of Tina, a 15-year-old pregnant girl
• Forever Love (1998) – television film partially based on Anne Shapiro's awakening after being in a coma for 20 years
• Gia (1998) – based on the life of Gia Carangi, a top American fashion model during the late 1970s and early 1980s
• Glory & Honor (1998) – television film based on the true story of Robert Peary and Matthew Henson's 1909 journey to the Geographic North Pole, and their nearly 20-year history of exploring the Arctic together
• Gods and Monsters (1998) – depiction of the last days of British film director James Whale
• Lautrec (1998) – French biographical film about the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
• The Long Island Incident (1998) – made-for-television drama film based on the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting
• Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998) – British made-for-television film, a fictional biography of painter Francis Bacon
• Miracle at Midnight (1998) – TV movie based on the rescue of the Danish Jews in Denmark during the Holocaust
• The Newton Boys (1998) – comedy drama film based on the true story of the Newton Gang, a family of bank robbers from Uvalde, Texas
• Nicholas' Gift (1998) – made-for-television drama film about an American couple on vacation in Italy in 1994 when their two children are attacked and shot by highway bandits
• Of Freaks and Men (Russian: Pro urodov i lyudey) (1998) – Russian film centered on two families and their decline at the hands of one man, Johann, and his pornographic endeavours
• Patch Adams (1998) – the story of the medical doctor, clown, performer, and social activist Patch Adams
• The Pentagon Wars (1998) – military comedy film based on the book The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard by Colonel James G. Burton, United States Air Force
• Psycho (1998) – inspired by the crimes of the real-life serial killer, Ed Gein; remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)
• Ruby Bridges (1998) – television film based on the true story of Ruby Bridges, one of the first black students to attend integrated schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1960
• Savior (1998) – war film about a U.S. mercenary escorting a Bosnian Serb woman and her newborn child to a United Nations safe zone during the Bosnian War.
• Saving Private Ryan (1998) – inspired by the story of the Niland Brothers during World War II
• Shot Through the Heart (1998) – television film which covers the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, the film is based on a true story and an article called Anti-Sniper by John Falk
• The Temptations (1998) – two-part miniseries based upon the history of one of Motown's longest-lived acts, American vocal group The Temptations
• The Versace Murder (1998) – docu-drama focusing on the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace by alleged serial killer Andrew Cunanan
• Why Do Fools Fall in Love (1998) – biographical drama film about R&B/Rock and roll singer Frankie Lymon, lead singer of the pioneering rock and roll group Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers for one year
• Windhorse (1998) – based on the lives of three young Tibetans who struggle for freedom against the Chinese communist regime
• Without Limits (1998) – biographical film about the relationship between record-breaking distance runner Steve Prefontaine and his coach Bill Bowerman, who later co-founded Nike, Inc.
• Witness to the Mob (1998) – made-for-TV film that follows the rise of Sammy Gravano in ranks in the Gambino crime family, one of the "Five Families" of the New York Cosa Nostra

1999

• Aimée & Jaguar (1999) – German drama film set in Berlin during World War II, based on Erica Fischer's book chronicling the actual lives of Lilly Wust and Felice Schragenheim during that time
• All the King's Men (1999) – British World War I television drama about the mystery of Sandringham Company, which disappeared in action at Gallipoli in 1915
• Angela's Ashes (1999) – Irish-American drama based on the memoir of the same title by Frank McCourt, telling the story of McCourt and his childhood after he and his family are forced to move from America back to Ireland because of financial difficulties and family problems caused by his father's alcoholism
• Anna and the King (1999) – the story of Anglo-Indian travel writer, educator and social activist Anna Leonowens and her experiences in Siam (Thailand)
• At First Sight (1999) – romantic drama film based on the essay "To See and Not See" in neurologist Oliver Sacks' 1995 book An Anthropologist on Mars and inspired by the true life story of Shirl Jennings
• Bhopal Express (1999) – Indian drama film set against the gas tragedy in Bhopal, India, in 1984
• The Blonde Bombshell (1999) – British two-part mini-series based on the life and death of actress Diana Dors
• Boys Don't Cry (1999) – the story of hate crime victim Brandon Teena
• Cradle Will Rock (1999) – historical drama film that fictionalizes the true events that surrounded the development of the 1937 musical The Cradle Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein
• The Cup (Tibetan: Phörpa) (1999) – Bhutanese Tibetan-language film about two young football-crazed Tibetan refugee novice monks in a remote Himalayan monastery in India who desperately try to obtain a television for the monastery to watch the 1998 World Cup final
• The Debt (Polish: Dług) (1999) – Polish film based on two entrepreneurs who become tangled in the web of a Russian thug in Warsaw, Poland in the early 1990s
• Dockers (1999) – British television drama about the struggles of a small group of Liverpool dockers who were sacked and subsequently spent nearly ​2 ¹⁄₂ years picketing during the Liverpool Dockers' Strike of 1995 to 1998
• Excellent Cadavers (Italian: I giudici) (1999) – Italian/American television film based on the book with the same name by Alexander Stille and tells the real life events of judge Giovanni Falcone
• Girl, Interrupted (1999) – based on author Susanna Kaysen's memoir of the same name, chronicling her 18-month stay at a mental institution
• Grey Owl (1999) – British/Canadian biopic about British schoolboy turned Native American trapper "Grey Owl", Archibald Belaney (1888–1938)
• The Hunley (1999) – television film about the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley, the first combat submarine to sink a warship
• The Hurricane (1999) – based on the imprisonment of middleweight boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter
• In a Class of His Own (1999) – made-for-television drama film about the true story of a high school janitor who never graduated high school and now must get his GED or lose his job
• In Too Deep (1999) – crime thriller film loosely based on a book about the takedown of a Boston gang lord, aided by an undercover cop
• Inherit the Wind (1999) – made-for-television film adaptation of the 1955 play of the same name which originally aired on Showtime. The original play was written as a parable which fictionalized the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial as a means of discussing the 1950s McCarthy trials
• The Insider (1999) – based on the experiences of Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco industry whistleblower
• Jesus (1999) – Italian/American biblical historical drama television film that retells the historical events of Jesus Christ
• Joan of Arc (1999) – Canadian miniseries based on the story of Joan of Arc, a young girl who believed she was God's messenger
• Man on the Moon (1999) – biopic about the life of late comedian Andy Kaufman
• The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) – based on the story of Joan of Arc, a young girl who believed she was God's messenger
• Molokai: The Story of Father Damien (1999) – Belgian biographical film of Father Damien, a Belgian priest working at the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement on the Hawaiian island of Molokai
• The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (1999) – British television true crime drama film based on the murder committed on 22 April 1993, and follows Stephen's parents' Doreen and Neville's quest for justice as a gang of racists are tried for their son's murder
• Music of the Heart (1999) – dramatization of the true story of Roberta Guaspari, who co-founded the Opus 118 Harlem School of Music and fought for music education funding in New York City public schools
• Mutiny (1999) – television drama film based on the story of the Port Chicago disaster during World War II where 50 African-American sailors were accused of mutiny because they declined to continue loading munitions after an explosion caused by failures in training and management
• My Life So Far (1999) – British/American film about a year in the life of a ten-year-old Scottish boy, set in 1927 and based on the memoirs of Denis Forman, a British television executive
• Not One Less (Mandarin: Yi ge dou bu neng shao) (1999) – Chinese drama film adapted from Shi Xiangsheng's 1997 story A Sun in the Sky, set in the People's Republic of China during the 1990s, the film centers on a 13-year-old substitute teacher, Wei Minzhi, in the Chinese countryside
• October Sky (1999) – biographical film adapted from the memoir Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam, a coal miner's son who was inspired by the launch of Sputnik 1 to take up rocketry against his father's wishes, and eventually became a NASA engineer
• One Man's Hero (1999) – historical war drama film about the true story of John Riley and the Saint Patrick's Battalion, a group of Irish Catholic immigrants who desert from the mostly Protestant U.S. Army to the mostly Catholic Mexican side during the Mexican–American War of 1846 to 1848
• Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999) – based on the story of Steve Jobs (Apple Computer) and Bill Gates (Microsoft) and their rivalry on the development of the personal computer
• The Return of Alex Kelly (a.k.a. The Alex Kelly Story) (1999) – Canadian film based on the life of convicted rapist Alex Kelly
• RKO 281 (1999) – historical drama film about the story of the making of Citizen Kane (1941)
• Rogue Trader (1999) – British biographical drama centering around the life of former derivatives broker Nick Leeson and the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank
• The Straight Story (1999) – based on the story of Alvin Straight's journey across Iowa and Wisconsin on a lawnmower
• Strange Justice (1999) – television film based on events regarding the sexual harassment accusation brought by Anita Hill during the Senate confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas for the United States Supreme Court during the George H. W. Bush presidential administration
• Summer of Sam (1999) – crime thriller film about the 1977 David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam") serial murders and their effect on a group of fictional residents of an Italian-American neighborhood in The Bronx in the late 1970s
• Switched at Birth (1999) – made-for-television drama film about two baby boys born more or less at the same time, who were switched soon after they were born
• Topsy-Turvy (1999) – musical drama concerning the period in 1884–1885 leading up to the premiere of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, focusing on the creative conflict between playwright and composer, and the decision by the two men to continue their partnership
• Tuesdays with Morrie (1999) – television film based on the memoir of the same title
• Ultimate Deception (a.k.a. Ultimate Betrayal) (1999) – made-for-television drama film about a man who has had a vasectomy and kills a young mother and steals her 3 month old baby, to please his married wife who yearns to raise a family
• The Winslow Boy (1999) – British/American period drama film set in London before World War I, it depicts a family defending the honour of its young son at all cost, based on Terence Rattigan's 1946 dramatic play The Winslow Boy
• Witch Hunt (1999) – Australian crime drama about a young girl who goes missing and her father who accuses his mother-in-law, Barbara of abducting her
• You Know My Name (1999) – made-for-television drama western film based on the real-life story of lawman and gunslinger Bill Tilghman

External links

• History at the Movies: Historical and Period Films
• Internet Movie Database list
• Films based on historical events and people