Reality Winners: The Rise and Rise of the ‘Literal’ Film | film

AFred Hitchcock, the director of some of the best films of all time, supposedly said that only three basic ingredients were needed to make a great film: “Script, script, script.” For a filmmaker, it can seem like a godsend when a fully formed film lands in your lap. But behind the growing number of movies there’s a simple trick: pull all your dialogue from real people. An increasing number of filmmakers are turning to scripts and recordings to reenact film episodes, with the promise of being as faithful as possible. From Reality (2023), Tina Sutter’s realistic portrayal of the whistleblower, Reality Winner, which evolves in real time from innocuous small talk to full-blown FBI interrogation, to Radu Jude (2020), in which a rebellious teenager is awarded the third degree in Ceaușescu-era Romania, the “Inspired by True Events” title card declaration is taken to a new form on quite literally a level.

Within a month, two more “literal” films will be released in UK cinemas. “Peter Hugar Day,” Ira Sachs’s time capsule of 1974 New York and its colorful culture, is based on a candid conversation between Linda Rosencrantz (Rebecca Hall) and her photographer boyfriend Peter (Ben Whishaw), who would die of an AIDS-related illness less than a decade later. Meanwhile, Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab” takes place in January 2024 amid the evacuation of Gaza City, revisiting an emergency call center’s attempts to rescue the six-year-old girl of the title to horrific effect.

There is industry precedent for following sources verbatim. Films including Sophie Scholl: Final Days (2005), The Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8 (1987), The Monster (2023) and even Christopher Nolan Oppenheimer (2023) have all dealt with the adaptation word for word, but the first true feature film dates back to 2015. London Road was director Rufus Norris’s second feature film; Adapted from the 2011 National Theater production of the same name, it is a bizarre tale of community spirit stirred up by the horrific serial murders in Ipswich, featuring curtain-moving Olivia Colman and taxi-driver Tom Hardy. Adam Cork and Aliki Blythe’s script echoes what the real residents of London Road said in the wake of the killings, making the bold creative decision to set their notes to music.

It is not unusual for literal adaptations to have theatrical roots. “Large Print” began as a play by Giannina Carbonario, while Sutter first reused the Reality Winer interrogation script (originally leaked to Politico) for her 2019 stage show Is This a Room. On stage, the genre has a long history, with the idea of ​​the “living newspaper” going back to the Federal Theater Project of the 1930s in the United States, which dealt with hot topics during the Great Depression. The hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s also provided the material for Eric Bentley’s popular early 1970s play “Are You Now, or Have You Ever?”

Interestingly, the verbatim approach has moved from stage to screen at a time when hybrid documentaries – an experimental form that combines fact and fiction – also seem to be gaining traction. (This year’s contributions include Fiume o Morte!, Blue Heron and The Wolves Always Come at Night.) More broadly, 120 documentaries and non-fiction films were released in UK cinemas in 2025, according to figures from box office analysts Comscore, for a total of £8.6m – a tiny 0.8 per cent of the 2025 UK total of £1.07bn – but still better Far from 2001 when only four documentaries were shown in cinemas, there is no doubt that fictional filmmaking still dominates.

Reality is often stranger than fiction, so filmmakers may have concluded that wrapping real events in a dramatic wrapper is the best way to engage viewers, cut through the noise of the news cycle and address difficult truths. Texts with dramatic potential require minimal editing, with speakers helpfully inserted, as Sater notes, “like characters in a play.” Thanks to Hugar’s natural eloquence, Sachs needed some adjustments to the poetic text. Bin Haniyeh also said that there is no need to make any amendments to the story of Hind Rajab, because what is happening in Gaza is “something beyond imagination.”

Another hallmark of the new craft wave is… the truth The cinematography, which features close-ups, hand-held cameras and natural lighting, is designed to create a sense of immediacy and direct interaction with the film’s subjects. Hind Rajab’s Voice combines stunning close-ups of the cast as well as actual recordings of the girl at its center. There is an obvious appeal to getting closer to reality when current events become increasingly difficult to deal with. In Ben Hania’s film, verbatim performances and recordings are an important part of staying true to Hind’s story and enabling her voice to be heard – with a voice that speaks for itself.