Based on real events or people, not scripted fiction. Doesn't dictate visual approach, but shapes audience expectation and distribution strategy.
Working with true stories requires a different mental approach from the director than pure fiction. You are no longer in a vacuum — there are eyewitnesses, documentation, and often enough, critics who will question every cut. This fundamentally changes your responsibility as a storyteller. You can invent, condense, reorder — that is your job as a filmmaker — but you are operating in a space where credibility and inner truth are not identical to factual correctness.
On set, you notice it immediately: research takes time. You need authentic locations, or you must consciously decide to falsify them. Costume and production design don't work from taste, but from archival material. Actors study real people — not to imitate them, but to grasp their inner logic. This is subtler than it sounds. In a biopic, you sit with your DoP and ask yourself: What did the light look like when this person entered this room? This isn't a nostalgic gimmick — it's craftsmanship authenticity.
In the edit, tension is built differently. You can't simply ignore chronology if the audience knows how it turned out. Many directors then work with foreshadowing, internal condensation, or multiple timelines — think of films like Spotlight or The Wolf of Wall Street. They build tension not through plot twists, but through the way they arrange facts and which details they bring to the forefront.
Marketing will co-opt you anyway: "Based on true events" is a draw. But as a director, you must be clear internally that this phrase must not replace your artistic judgment. You remain a filmmaker, not a documentarian — even if the story is real. The biggest mistakes are made when trying to achieve authenticity through an accumulation of facts rather than through emotional and dramatic condensation. An invented scene that captures a person's truth better than ten documented moments — that is your craft.