Must Watch Movies from Asia Inspired by True Events

Have you ever wondered whether stories in movies actually happen in real life? Or how movie writers come up with their ideas? Believe it or not, but fiction is sometimes closer to reality than you think. This article mentions 3 movies inspired by real life events and show you the realities of the world.

1. Close-up (1990)

(Drama, Docufiction)

While reading an article about an incident written by the journalist Hassan Farazmand, the director Abbas Kiarostami found its perfect story for a movie. The incident that took place in 1990, is about the poor man Hossain Sabzian, who is a cinephile and a great fan of the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. One day, he sits next to a woman named Mahrokh Ahankhah in a bus ride, reading his copy of director Makhmalhaf’s screenplay The Cyclist. The two strikes a conversation and the woman tells him to be a great fan of the screenplay. To impress her, Sabzian pretends to be the Iranian director Makhmalbaf himself. Later on, the Ahankhah family becomes friendly with Sabzian, and he says he wants to use their house and sons for “his” new movie he is filming. Eventually, Sabzian’s true identity gets revealed, and he gets arrested for fraud. Without the events being over and the Makhalmafs impersonator’s fate having yet to be decided, director Kiarostami quickly took action to make a film of it. Together with his film crew, he gained permission to join and film the trial as active participants, and after the complaint was dropped, he filmed previous parts of the story with everyone involved in the event playing themselves.

Close-up tells a compelling story about human identity and an unusual crime committed by an impersonator.

2. Capernaum (2018)

(Drama)

The director Nadine Labaki spent 4 years researching and following the lives of children on the streets to create her award-winning movie. The story tells the realities of children living on the streets and being neglected by parents and society. Nadine Labaki used non-actors who performed on the spot using their own words and closely paralleled their own life to portray “a real struggle on that big screen”.

The story follows the 12-years old Syrian refugee Zain El Hajj (Zain Al Rafeea) from the slums of Lebanon who runs away from home and commits a violent crime that sentences him 5 years in jail. At a court, he decides to sue his parents for bringing him into this world. From here, the story flashbacks to his journey on the streets where he meets the Ethiopian migrant worker Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw) who lets him live in her shack on the condition that he will babysit her undocumented son Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole) while she is at work. Rahil works as a cleaner, but she can’t afford to pay her counterfeiter Aspro for new documents. Eventually, after her papers expire she gets arrested by authorities, and Zain is left on his own to take care of Yonas.

Capernaum tells the story of society’s systematic inhumanity through the eyes and voice of children.

3. A touch of sin (2013)

(Drama, Action)

The story tells four different tales taking place in different locations in China with inspiration from real-life and newsworthy events.

The first tale is of Dahai (Jian Wu) from Shanxi. He is the representative of the coal mine workers and carries an anger towards the growing rich officials while the village is struggling with poverty. The events from his part of the movie are based on the Hu Wenhai incident in 2001.

Second tale is about Zhou San (Wang Baoqiang). He is from Chongqing and has a wife and a son. He has mysterious ways of “earning” his money. The story of Zhou San is slightly based on that of a gunman by the name of Zhou Kehua. Between 2004 and 2012 he committed murders and robberies which is reflected in the movie as well.

The third tale is that of a receptionist at a Spa in Hunan. Xiao Yu (Zhao Tao) want her lover to divorce his wife. But his wife finds out and hires thugs to assault Xiao Yu. She manages to escape and decides to see her mother. However, on her way she gets confronted with unfavorable encounters. The events refer to a 2009 murder case when a pedicurist killed a local officer. and the 2011 train crash at Wenzhou killing 40 people.

The fourth tale is about Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan) from Hunan, working at a textile factory in Guangdong. At work he accidently causes an injury to another worker. Resisting to have his wages go to the injured party, Xiao Hui decides to flee to Dongguan and work as a hostess. However, the incidents from his previous work and misfortune is still following him. His tale is based on the Foxconn factories suicides between 2010 and 2013.

The situation of the four outcasts and the rapid change of China turn their inner rage out of control shedding blood. China censored the movie, not because of the portrayal of violence, but because of the sensitive subjects like economic inequality, social insecurity, and social instability, which envisions the image of China negatively.

Read this article for more compelling movies.

What story based on real-life would you recommend? Tell us in the comment section below!

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