43 Best Movies About Writers

For fans of good literature it is always interesting to learn about those people who come up with great stories, and the world cinema tries to highlight the biographies of writers, trace the paths of their formation or reveal details of their personal lives.

We have gathered for you a collection of movies dedicated to different authors of fascinating books. This list includes the best films about real writers. Not all of them are biographically accurate, but in any case after each of these films you will definitely want to get closer to the creative legacy of the main character.

Finding Neverland

• Rating IMDB – 7.7
• Genre: Drama, Family, Biography
• USA, UK production / 2004
• Budget: $25 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $116 650 613
• Directed by Mark Forster
• Cast: Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Freddie Highmore, Julie Christie, Radha Mitchell, Dustin Hoffman, Ian Hart, Kelly McDonald, Mackenzie Crook, Eileen Essel

This story is about the creator of Peter Pan, the Scottish novelist and playwright James Barry, brilliantly played in this film by Johnny Depp.

After the failed premiere of his next play, the disillusioned Barry, while walking in the park, happens to meet the charming widow Davis and her four children. A spark of interest in the novelist is kindled by one of them, Peter, a serious boy who grieves for his father and dreams of growing up faster to get rid of the heartache. Sylvia Davis becomes dear to James, and Peter inspires him to write a play that will change the world.

Peter Pan is one of the most popular characters in world literature. His first statue was commissioned by D. Barry himself and installed in 1912 in Kensington Gardens, where it remains to this day.

Becoming Jane

• Rating IMDB – 7.0
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography
• UK, Ireland production / 2006
• Budget: $16 500 000
• Worldwide gross: $37 311 672
• Directed by Julian Jarrold
• Cast: Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy, Julie Walters, James Cromwell, Maggie Smith, Anna Maxwell Martin, Lucy Cohu, Lawrence Fox, Ian Richardson, Joe Anderson

A charmingly graceful and light costume film starring Anne Hathaway, who perfectly embodied on screen the image of Jane Austen, the legendary Englishwoman who wrote the deepest, most realistic novels in the eighteenth century.

Little is known about the writer’s real biography, and in this film, the plot is built around Austen’s becoming and her true love, which may have existed in reality.

So 20-year-old Jane is about to marry at the behest of her relatives, but she meets a young, feisty Irish lawyer, Thomas Lefroy, and this changes the fate of George Austen, the penultimate daughter of the parish priest.

Jane Austen’s books are considered masterpieces of world literature. They weave together profound psychological studies of the characters, English humor, and thoughtful historical detail.

Les amants du Flore

• Rating IMDB – 6.5
• Genre: Drama, biography
• France production / 2006
• Directed by Ilan Durand Cohen
• Cast: Anne Mouglalis, Laurent Deutsch, Caroline Ciolle, Call Weber, Clemence Poesy, Julien Bomgartner, Sarah Stern, Didier Sandre, Jennifer Decker, Vladislav Galard

This is a French film about the outstanding feminist writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and her lover Jean-Paul Sartre. The representative of an ancient aristocratic family, Simone received higher education in Paris and there she found her love – the playwright, philosopher and socialist Sartre.

Their very long relationship was built on complete freedom and creative interaction. The two made a pact of intellectual fidelity to each other, not considering sex with others as betrayal or treason.

Since 2008, the de Beauvoir Prize has been awarded to defenders of women’s rights. Her most famous book is The Second Sex. And Sartre won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, but declined the award.

Saving Mr. Banks

• Rating IMDB – 7.5
• Genre: Drama, Biography, History, Music
• UK, Australia, USA production / 2013
• Budget: $35 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $117 867 984
• Directed by John Lee Hancock
• Cast: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, Annie Rose Buckley, Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, B.J. Novak, Ruth Wilson, Bradley Whitford, Rachel Griffiths

The plot of this film starring Emma Stone and Tom Hanks is centered on Walt Disney’s 20 years of persistent attempts to get permission to adapt the famous “Mary Poppins” from its creator, Pamela Travers.

The events of the film take place in two times. In 1961, Disney organized Travers’ visit to America and welcomed her, skeptical about the idea of translating her tale into Hollywood. At the same time, Pamela recalls her childhood in Australia and her father, who became the prototype of Mr. Banks.

Even before creating the epic about the legendary Nanny, Pamela visited the Soviet Union and compiled a marvelous and very incisive book, A Tour of Moscow, filled with vivid images of that era.

Le scaphandre et le papillon

• Rating IMDB – 8.0
• Genre: Drama, biography
• France, USA production / 2007
• Worldwide gross: $19 777 647
• Directed by Julian Schnabel
• Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuel Seigner, Marie-José Croz, Anne Cocigny, Patrick Chenet, Niels Arestrup, Olatz Lopez Garmendia, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Marina Andes, Max von Sydow

This film, with its profound meaning and motivating message, tells the tragic fate and incredible overcoming of Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of a French fashion magazine. In 1995, after a stroke, Bobi remains bedridden in a vegetable state. The only thing he can do is wink one eye. Doctors devised a system: one blink for yes, two for no.

So he wrote his masterpiece, “Suit and Butterfly,” winking when an assistant pointed him to the right letter. It is a story of despair and terror in the heavy uncontrolled “spacesuit” of a sick body and of the life-saving, unbearably bright butterfly of the imagination that lives in the human mind.

Bobi had only one book that became a world bestseller. He passed away a few days after its publication.

The Hours

• Rating IMDB – 7.5
• Genre: Drama, biography
• USA, UK, France, Canada, Germany production / 2002
• Budget: $25 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $108 846 072
• Directed by Stephen Daldry
• Cast: Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Ed Harris, Miranda Richardson, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Steven Dillane, John C. Reilly, Toni Collette

This film, starring Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, links the fates of three women divided by time who are searching for something meaningful to find meaning in existence. Connecting the heroines is one of them, the famous feminist writer Virginia Woolf, working on her 1923 book Mrs. Dalloway and contemplating suicide.

The other two women live in other eras. Laura is a sweet ’50s housewife reading Wolfe’s book in her spotlessly clean, indifference-soaked, hypocritical mansion. Clarissa is the relaxed and independent editor of the early twenty-first century, jokingly called “Mrs. Dalloway” by her former lover.

Wolfe was an essayist and novelist, a leading figure in modernist literature of the early 20th century. Her books are part of the world’s literary treasure trove.

Shadowlands

• Rating IMDB – 7.4
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography
• UK production / 1993
• Budget: $22 000 000
• Directed by Richard Attenborough
• Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Edward Hardwick, Joseph Mazzello, James Frain, Julian Fellowes, Michael Denison, John Wood, Peter Firth, Roddy Maude-Roxby

A biographical film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, who played British writer and philosopher Clive Lewis and Jewish poet Joy Davidman in this unhurried tale of their love and creative symbiosis.

Lewis met Joy during her visit to Britain in the ’50s. She was married, and Lewis, a confirmed bachelor, didn’t think it was possible to be so attracted to a woman. However, Gresham, the poetess’s husband, a violent man prone to drunkenness and adultery, was not a serious obstacle to the love of the two. They married in 1956, and soon Joy was diagnosed with transient cancer.

In fact, Lewis did not actually think highly of Joy as a lover, but rather as an intellectual interlocutor and an inspiration. And the marriage was arranged so that the woman would not be deported from England.

Wilde

• Rating IMDB – 6.9
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography
• UK, Japan, Germany production/ 1997
• Budget: $10 000 000
• Directed by Brian Gilbert
• Cast: Stephen Fry, Jude Law, Vanessa Redgrave, Jennifer Elle, Gemma Jones, Judy Parfitt, Michael Sheen, Zoe Wanamaker, Tom Wilkinson, Joan Griffith

Here is part of the biography of Ireland’s greatest poet and writer, the story of his passions that allowed him to create masterpieces and then ruined his life. After a trip to America, Wilde returns to Britain, marries a cold Constance and soon enough celebrates the birth of his son.

But to him, a rebellious soul, the marriage and primitive society are not enough. He soon begins to lead a double life, seduced by the charms of young boys. Each stormy infatuation of the poet ends with another creation, causing either rapture or scandal. And one day his fatal and final passion appears in Oscar’s life – the manipulator Alfred Douglas, because of whom the refined poet soon finds himself in prison.

It was through his double life that Wilde wrote Portrait of Dorian Gray and Lady Windermere’s Fan.

Unga Astrid

• Rating IMDB – 7.1
• Genre: Drama, biography
• Sweden, Denmark production / 2018
• Worldwide gross: $938 766
• Directed by Pernilla Fischer Christensen
• Cast: Alba August, Maria Bonnevi, Trine Durholm, Henrik Rafaelsen, Magnus Krepper, Bjørn Gustafsson, Marius Damsev, Willi Ramnek Petri, Liv Lemoyne, Sofia Karemir

What is she like, the woman who gave the world Carlson and Pippi Longstocking? Watch this film, a cheerful biopic about the childhood and youth of the woman who became an immortal writer for the sake of her child.

Astrid has loved to write since childhood, has an irrepressible imagination, and adores her family. Already as a teenager, her father gets her a job at a newspaper. Here, a doomed but very passionate love affair flares up between the young Astrid and her married editor, after which little Lars is born, who has to live in a foster family for several years.

If you have children, be sure to read them Astrid’s other tales as well: about Madicken, about Emil, and about the children of Cutthroat Street.

Molière

• Rating IMDB – 7.1
• Genre: Comedy, biography
• France production / 2007
• Budget: €16 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $10 878 867
• Directed by Laurent Tirard
• Cast: Romain Durice, Fabrice Luchini, Laura Morante, Edouard Baer, Ludivine Sagnier, Fanny Valette, Gonzague Montuelle, Guiliane Petrovsky, Sophie-Charlotte Yusson, Anna Suarez

A very beautiful French biopic about the life of Jean-Baptiste Paquelin, whom the whole world knows as the playwright Moliere, author of the plays “Tartuffe” and “Don Juan”, numerous comedies and ballets. The action of the film unfolds in the XVII century after the return of Moliere with his troupe to Paris and his employment at the Royal Theater.

From that moment on Molière worked feverishly, creating one masterpiece after another, under the patronage of Louis XIV himself. Each production was not easy for him – the mocking playwright had many influential enemies, especially in the clergy.

Few people know that Moliere was a professional actor and, incidentally, is considered the parent of classical comedy.

Shakespeare in Love

• Rating IMDB – 7.1
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, comedy, history
• USA, UK production / 1998
• Budget: $25 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $289 317 794
• Directed by John Madden
• Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck, Judi Dench, Simon Callow, Jim Carter, Martin Clunes, Anthony Sher

A splendid tragicomedy set in the realities of Elizabethan London, telling its own version of the creation of the greatest love drama, Romeo and Juliet. The film perfectly combines historical facts and artistic embellishments, skillfully playing with many unproven myths about Shakespeare’s life.

So, in 1593 London, Shakespeare suffers a creative crisis and tries to stage his new play. Meanwhile, in the theater, where women were not allowed to play, under the guise of a young actor Thomas Kent, the flighty Viola, daughter of a wealthy merchant, sneaks in. This girl will change the fate of the brilliant playwright.

Did you know that no one knows the exact date when Romeo and Juliet was completed? The play is dated “Somewhere between 1593 and 1596. And the film has been nominated for 119 different awards and won 58 of them.

Balzac

• Rating IMDB – 6.7
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography
• France, Italy, Germany production / 1999
• Directed by Jose Diane
• Cast: Gérard Depardieu, Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardan, Virna Lisi, Katia Riemann, Claude Riche, Gert Foss, Sergio Roubini, François Martore, Marianne Denicourt

The four-part, simply epic film with 40-year-old Gérard Depardieu as Balzac is a German-Italian-French co-production that details the fate of the great founder of literary realism.

The story focuses on the creator’s relationship with women. His awe of his overbearing, icy mother Charlotte. The love-friendship with the mature and understanding Laura de Bernie. Touching affection for his sister Laura. Passion for Evelyne Gansky. All of this is reflected in the unhurried film describing the life of a genius who changed the world.

Balzac’s opus “The Human Comedy” is one of the significant monuments of world literature. And “Shagreen Skin” is a brilliant mystical gothic.

Miss Potter

• Rating IMDB – 7.0
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography
• UK, USA, Isle of Man production / 2006
• Budget: $30 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $35 051 541
• Directed by Chris Noonen
• Cast: Renee Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, Barbara Flynn, Bill Paterson, Matiloch Gibbs, Lloyd Owen, Anton Lesser, David Bamber, Phyllida Lo

A bright and sunny film about Beatrix Potter, an English children’s writer and illustrator who fell in love with the scenic wonders of the Lake District and became a rare specimen of her time (late 19th century) – a real scholarly woman who wrote works on mycology.

The film recounts the dreams of young Beatrice, who first entrusted her manuscripts to the inexperienced publisher Norman Warne, and made no mistake, finding in him a loyal friend, an excellent professional, and a loving husband.

Find Beatrix Potter tales for your children about Peter the rabbit, Tressie the squirrel, or Tom the kitten. You won’t regret it!

Tolkien

• Rating IMDB – 6.8
• Genre: Biography, War, Drama, Melodrama
• USA production / 2019
• Worldwide gross: $9 090 040
• Directed by Dome Karukoski
• Cast: Nicholas Holt, Lily Collins, Derek Jacoby, Al Bollands, Callum Tolkin, Craig Roberts, Harry Gilby, Colm Meany, Laura Donnelly, Guillermo Bedward

It is no secret that Tolkien symbolically portrayed the many sorrows of our world in his great works. But first there were his mother’s fascinating stories, his talent for many languages, his boyhood Tea Club fraternity, and his vivid thirst for knowledge. And then came World War I…

A beautiful, detailed and highly ethically respectful film by Finnish director Dome Karukoski tells the story of Tolkien’s childhood, youth, hobbies, talents and love, all of which gave birth to the incredible world of the Mediterranean.

Tolkien’s financial and authorial legacy is the Tolkien Estate Charitable Corporation, run by the writer’s descendants. And, by the way, they did not approve this film.

Emily

• Rating IMDB – 6.9
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography
• UK, USA production / 2022
• Worldwide gross: $3 910 487
• Directed by Francis O’Connor
• Cast: Emma Mackie, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Finn Whitehead, Alexandra Dowling, Amelia Gatting, Adrian Dunbar, Gemma Jones, Veronica Roberts, Gerald Lepkowski, Cara Foley

Another love story with a fair amount of fiction, directed and written by Australian actress Frances O’Connor. She immerses us in the world of the youth and freedom of Emily Brontë, author of the classic “Wuthering Heights.”

One day Patrick Brontë hires a young vicar, William Weitman, to teach his daughter Emily French. Gradually, the two young men become close, but frightened by the consequences, William abruptly ends the relationship, breaking Emily’s heart. The loss of love will lead to the creation of a magnificent novel, Emily Brontë’s only major work.

In addition to Wuthering Heights, Brontë, along with her sisters, published a collection of poems under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell.

Hannah Arendt

• Rating IMDB – 7.1
• Genre: Drama, biography
• Germany, Luxembourg, France, Israel production / 2012
• Directed by Margarete von Trotta
• Cast: Barbara Zukova, Janet McTier, Julia Jentsch, Axel Milberg, Megan Gay, Nicholas Woodeson, Tom Leek, Ulrich Nöten, Nilton Martins

Have you heard of the “Banality of Evil”? The concept was born in the mouth of Hannah Arendt, a German-American philosopher, essayist and writer who attended the trial of Eichmann, one of the main organizers of the Holocaust, covering the trial for the magazine.

Hannah was shocked at how unassuming, well-behaved and completely ordinary the real fascist monster looked. But even more profoundly shocking to her was the way Eichmann justified his atrocities by claiming that he was merely “following orders,” obeying without question, dissolving his personality into the system and killing without motivation or intention. It’s just the job. Hannah’s articles on this process were a scandalous revelation to the world.

Hannah has several research books (including the famous “The Banality of Evil”) that help develop her own thinking and responsibility for her personal actions.

The Glass Castle

• Rating IMDB – 7.1
• Genre: Drama, biography
• USA production / 2017
• Worldwide gross: $22 088 533
• Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
• Cast: Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, Naomi Watts, Ella Anderson, Chandler Head, Max Greenfield, Josh Barclay Karas, Charlie Shotwell, Ian Armitage, Sarah Snook

In 2005, the American journalist and society columnist Jeannette Walls published her memoirs in the form of a riveting book about her nomadic childhood. The book quickly became a bestseller, and the film based on it is in front of you.

As a child, the Walls family was constantly moving from town to town in search of work, food, and shelter. The parents incessantly feed their children with magical stories about the romance of travel, and the father promises to build Janet a beautiful glass castle according to his own drawings.

Jeannette Walls’ recent novel, Hang the Moon, was published in March 2023.

Goodbye Christopher Robin

• Rating IMDB – 7.1
• Genre: Drama, Family, Biography
• UK, USA production / 2017
• Worldwide gross: $7 401 949
• Directed by Simon Curtis
• Cast: Donal Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Kelly McDonald, Vicky Pepperdine, Will Tilston, Alex Lowther, Stephen Campbell Moore, Richard McCabe, Geraldine Somerville, Mossy Smith

Returning from World War I, Alan Milne suffers psychological and physical trauma and finds himself unable to write. He settles in a quiet country estate, where he is soon alone with his son Christopher Robin.

They take long walks together, and gradually Milne begins to make up tales for his son about the funny bear, the boy’s friend Christopher Robin. When illustrator Shepard visits the Milnes, children’s book projects are born, which soon become highly successful. However, fame is bad for Christopher himself, and Milne decides to give up writing so as not to harm his son.

Before the war Milne worked for Punch magazine and was known for his excellent feuilletons. Alan was considered London’s most promising playwright, but Winnie the Pooh eclipsed all the writer’s previous successes.

Bright Star

• Rating IMDB – 6.9
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography
• Australia, UK, France production / 2009
• Budget: $8 500 000
• Worldwide gross: $14 310 133
• Directed by Jane Campion
• Cast: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider, Carrie Fox, Edie Martin, Thomas Sangster, Claudy Blakely, Gerard Monaco, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Samuel Rookin

This film is the beautiful, tragic and even heartbreaking story of John Keats and the bright star of his soul, Fanny Brown. A girl meets the poet in 1918 and begins to literally stalk him, stumbling into alienation.

And then Keats happens to see Fanny grieving over the death of a loved one. The sincerity and depth of the girl’s feelings touch John, and he begins to give her poetry lessons, but does not seek to become close. However, Fanny’s persistence pays off, and soon they are secretly engaged to lose each other very soon.

John Keats is one of the canonical English Romantic poets whose works are included in the treasury of British literature.

An Angel at My Table

• Rating IMDB – 7.4
• Genre: Drama, biography
• New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA production / 1990
• Directed by Jane Campion
• Cast: Kerry Fox, Alexa Keogh, Karen Ferguson, Iris Chorn, Jesse Moon, Kevin J. Wilson, Francesca Collins, Melina Bernecker, Mark Morrison, Catherine Murray-Cooper

A fascinating adaptation of the autobiography of one of New Zealand’s most famous writers, Janet Frame, reveals the healing power of creativity. It all begins with the writer’s childhood.

She is a red-haired, ugly girl who writes wonderful poetry but is overly prone to nervous breakdowns. Her emotions lead the girl to a mental hospital, where she spends a long eight years misdiagnosed as trying to pursue her favorite creative work. She miraculously escapes a lobotomy and then leaves the clinic. She heads off to Europe for new inspirations.

Unfortunately, very few of Frame’s books have been translated into Russian. She writes psychological prose with gripping plots about people and their difficulties.

Rebel in the Rye

• Rating IMDB – 6.7
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, war, biography
• USA production / 2016
• Worldwide gross: $944 370
• Directed by Danny Strong
• Cast: Nicholas Holt, Kevin Spacey, Victor Garber, Hope Davis, Zoey Deutch, Lucy Boynton, Brian D’Arcy James, Eric Bogosian, Bernard White, Jefferson Mays

His single, deafeningly popular novel, Jerome Salinger refused to be screened during his lifetime, and after his death it has not been possible either, his heirs will not allow it. In 2016, however, Danny Strong presented to the world the life story of the writer who created the key teen novel of the 20th century.

The offspring of a wealthy merchant, Jerome dreams of becoming a writer, clashes with his father and finds support in his teacher, publisher Whit Burnett, whose patronage allows Jerome to begin his writing career. But his plans are brutally ruined by World War II, where the young writer volunteers, never stopping to write and think about his future masterpiece.

In addition to the novel Rebel in the Rye, Salinger has a long list of gripping short stories reflecting traumatic wartime experiences.

The End of the Tour

• Rating IMDB – 7.2
• Genre: Drama, biography
• USA production / 2015
• Worldwide gross: $3 072 991
• Directed by James Ponsoldt
• Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Jason Siegel, Anna Klamsky, Mamie Gummer, Mickey Sumner, Joan Cusack, Ron Livingston, Javon Anderson, John Arden McClure, Alisha Atallah

After hearing in 2008 about the suicide of novelist David Foster Wallace, American journalist and author David Lipsky recalls an event that happened to him 12 years earlier. Back then, just after the publication of his famous book “The Endless Joke,” Lipsky went on a tour with him to launch the new book, and spent five days taking notes to compile a big interview with Wallace.

What started out as a less-than-happy interaction between celebrity and journalist turned into a strong friendship by the end of the tour. It was these conversations that enabled Lipsky to become a writer, and he is grateful for Wallace’s time together.

Wallace’s posthumous novel The Pale King was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Lipsky is best known for his novel Art Fair, but his other books are often bestsellers as well.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

• Rating IMDB – 7.2
• Genre: Biography, drama
• USA, China production / 2019
• Budget: $25 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $67 925 733
• Directed by Mariel Heller
• Cast: Matthew Reese, Tom Hanks, Chris Cooper, Susan Kelechi Watson, Marianne Plunkett, Enrico Colantoni, Wendy McKenna, Tammy Blanchard, Noah Harpster, Carmen Cusack

A nontrivial biography of Fred Rogers, the iconic guru of parenting and education in the United States, who from 1968 until 2001 produced Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood children’s show as writer, composer, puppeteer, and showrunner for the project. A musician, writer and priest, he gave his all to the show he loved and was an upbeat man who inspired many.

The film takes the form of an interview with Fred (played by Tom Hanks) by journalist Lloyd Vogel, a sullen and cynical man who, under the influence of his interlocutor, begins to see the world differently, learning to truly appreciate life and the people around him.

The biography, name, and character of the reporter (in reality his name was Tom Junod) are altered for the film, while the image of Fred Rogers is made up meticulously and authentically. And yes, they became close friends after that interview, and Junod’s article formed the basis of the script for this film.

My Boy Jack

• Rating IMDB – 7.1
• Genre: Drama, War, Biography, History
• UK, USA, Ireland production / 2007
• Directed by Brian Kirk
• Cast: David Haig, Daniel Radcliffe, Kim Cattrall, Cary Mulligan, Julian Wadham, Martin McCann, Richard Dormer, Ruri Conroy, Laurence Kinlan, Ciaran Nolan

The film is about a father and son obsessed with the desire to serve their country, which turns out to be the tragic death of their son Jack and a burst of inspiration from Rudyard Kipling’s father.

In 1914, Britain enters World War I. The patriotic Kipling cooperates with propaganda, writing inspirational articles, speaking to people. His 17-year-old son tries to volunteer for the army, to his father’s greater pride and to the dismay of his mother and sister, but he fails because of his short-sightedness. And then Kipling uses his influence and acquaintance with high ranks to send his son into the active army, facing an early and ridiculous death…

Jack Kipling’s body was never found. And the maestro himself changed his attitude to the war and wrote the famous lines: “If anyone asks why we died, answer them: because our fathers lied to us.”

Naked Lunch

• Rating IMDB – 6.9
• Genre: Fantasy, thriller, drama
• Canada, UK production / 1991
• Budget: $16 000 000
• Directed by David Cronenberg
• Cast: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Roy Scheider, Monique Mercure, Nicholas Campbell, Michael Zelnicker, Robert A. Silverman, Joseph Skoren

Based on the twentieth-century classic Burroughs’ semibiographical book, Naked Lunch, David Cronenberg’s film is a surreal mix of bizarre drug fantasy and actual events from the writer’s life. The story reflects the “drug period” of Burroughs’ work, who was able to cope with his addiction later in life.

The story’s protagonist is a laborer, Bill Lee, who destroys cockroaches. One day he is exposed to cockroach poison and begins to hallucinate, imagining that he is a secret agent of a powerful organization for which he writes detailed reports.

“Naked Lunch” was the beginning of Burroughs’ frenzied popularity. By the way, it was he who invented the method of composing letters from letters cut out of newspapers, used in various thrillers.

Iris

• Rating IMDB – 7.0
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography
• UK, USA production / 2001
• Budget: $5 500 000
• Worldwide gross: $16 153 953
• Directed by Richard Eyre
• Cast: Kate Winslet, Hugh Bonneville, Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Elinor Bron, Angela Morant, Penelope Wilton, Siobhan Hayes, Juliette Aubrey, Joan Bakewell

This biopic about the life of writer Iris Murdoch is based on the memoirs of her husband Bailey, who published his memoirs in 1998. The film begins with their acquaintance at Oxford, where both were teaching. The indecisive Bailey fell in love with the spirited Iris and they were soon married.

Their tumultuous life was filled with creativity and Iris’s endless experimentation-changes. In spite of this, Bailey was happy without giving a damn about his energetic wife’s love affairs. And then she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease…

John Bailey is also a writer, influential critic and literary analyst. Iris, on the other hand, is known as a philosopher and novelist. Her most famous work is the novel Under the Net.

Before Night Falls

• Rating IMDB – 7.1
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography, history
• USA, Mexico production / 2000
• Worldwide gross: $8 524 534
• Directed by Julian Schnabel
• Cast: Javier Bardem, Olivier Martinez, Andrea Di Stefano, Johnny Depp, Michael Wincott, Diego Luna, Sean Penn, John Ortiz, Olaz Lopez Garmendia, Giovanni Florido

This is the story of the Cuban poet and writer Reynaldo Arenas, based on his autobiographical novel. He was born in 1943, raised by a single mother, wrote his first poems as a child and explored his sexuality.

In the ’60s Arenas begins to publish, including abroad. But tensions rise in Cuba, and in the ’70s the writer is arrested for publishing abroad without the consent of the authorities. He spent 10 whole years in jail, unsuccessfully trying to find a way to leave the country. It was only in 1980 that he managed to go to the United States, where another test awaits him – AIDS.

Arenas’ best-known work is the clever grotesque “Dreamworld,” from 1966.

The Raven

• Rating IMDB – 6.4
• Genre: Thriller, Crime, Detective
• USA, Spain, Hungary production / 2011
• Budget: $26 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $29 699 345
• Directed by James McTeague
• Cast: John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve, Brendan Gleeson, Kevin McNally, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Jimmy Yuill, Sam Hazeldine, Pam Ferris, Brendan Coyle

This film is perhaps the furthest thing from a true biography of the writer Edgar Allan Poe, who is one of the main characters. It is rather an allusion, a fantasy on the theme of his works, a detective and mystical film with John Cusack as Poe.

The murder that takes place in Baltimore strongly resembles the crime described in Allan Poe’s book, and Detective Emmett Fields summons the writer for a chat. Soon another murder occurs, mimicking another plot of Poe’s book. The writer and the detective begin a joint investigation, trying to guess the motives of the perpetrator and stop him.

Edgar Allan Poe is the ancestor of the classic detective, psychological thrillers and some subgenres of fiction.

Capote

• Rating IMDB – 7.3
• Genre: Drama, Crime, Biography, History
• USA, Canada production / 2005
• Budget: $7 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $48 083 613
• Directed by Bennett Miller
• Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., Chris Cooper, Bob Balaban, Bruce Greenwood, Amy Ryan, Mark Pellegrino, Ellie Mickelson, Kelsey Stephenson

This is the unfictionalized story of some of the events in the life of the great novelist Truman Capote. In 1959, the writer, already world-famous for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, travels to Kansas.

Here there was a monstrous murder of an entire family, and Truman wants to write his own reportage about it, talking to all the participants in the events. He talks at length with the criminals, developing a sympathy for one of them, Perry Smith. Capote realizes that this story would make a great book and begins to work on it, although he is endlessly irritated by the continually delayed denouement due to appeals: the death penalty for the criminals.

As a result of this investigation Capote released his bestseller, Cold-Blooded Murder.

Colette

• Rating IMDB – 6.7
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography, history
• UK, USA, Hungary production / 2017
• Worldwide gross: $14 273 033
• Directed by Wash Westmoreland
• Cast: Keira Knightley, Fiona Shaw, Dominic West, Robert Pugh, Sloane Thompson, Arabella Weare, Mate Howman, Ray Pantucky, Al Weaver, Virag Baran

Colette is a young country girl who falls in love with the capital’s hustler and little-known writer, Willy, and brings her to Paris, introducing her to the beau monde. The socialites are amazed that Willy, a notorious libertine, has settled down. But there is a reason for this.

Willy tries to make a literary career by hiring “ghostwriters” for his articles, but he is not successful. One day he decides to submit Colette’s novel to an editor, and the book, published under Willie’s authorship, becomes a bestseller. And Colette begins to fight for her creative independence.

Colette was a famous French actress and writer of the early 20th century, known for her ironic novels about the life of secular bohemia of that era.

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

• Rating IMDB – 7.1
• Genre: Drama, biography, comedy, crime
• USA production / 2018
• Worldwide gross: $12 442 161
• Directed by Mariel Heller
• Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells, Ben Falcone, Gregory Korostyszewski, Jane Curtin, Stephen Spinella, Christian Navarro, Pan Bandu, Eric Laray Harvey

Lee Israel was an American Jewish writer and journalist known for her literary forgeries. She was constantly forging letters from deceased celebrities, stealing them from various exhibits and replacing them with her own copies, then selling the relics.

In 2008, Lee released her confessional book “Can You Forgive Me”, in which she revealed all the details of her fraudulent biography. It is on this scandalous memoir that this film is based.

In fact, Lee was a brilliant biographer, but gave up a boring career for adventurous letter-faking adventures, which she always recalled with pride.

Tove

• Rating IMDB – 6.8
• Genre: Drama, biography, history
• Finland, Sweden production / 2020
• Worldwide gross: $93 669
• Directed by Zaida Bergroth
• Cast: Alma Pövsti, Krista Kosonen, Shanti Rani, Joanna Haartti, Kaisa Ernst, Robert Enkel, Jakob Erman, Eeva Putro, Wilhelm Enkel, Liisi Tandefelt

Tove Jansson is very funny, lively and touching, just like her restless mummy-troll characters. And all this despite the serious and even tragic events of her life to which this film is dedicated, a series of sympathetic sketches about the Finnish intelligentsia of those years.

In the light-hearted manner of an entertaining film, it shows how a quiet caricaturist illustrator, Tuve gets commissions for paintings, and in her spare time she draws funny creatures that no one takes seriously. One day she decides to publish stories about mummy trolls and achieves a resounding success.

Mummy-trolls were incredibly popular in the USSR and are still considered iconic in Japan.

Genius

• Rating IMDB – 6.5
• Genre: Drama, biography
• UK, USA production / 2015
• Budget: $17 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $7 435 006
• Directed by Michael Grandage
• Cast: Colin Firth, Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Laura Linney, Guy Pearce, Dominic West, Vanessa Kirby, Gillian Hannah, Angela Ashton, Eve Bracken

A wonderful buddy-movie about the friendship between editor Maxwell Perkins and writer Thomas Wolfe, a movie starring Colin Firth and Jude Law.

Wolfe, an aspiring writer, is already desperate to see his work published. His last hope remains Scribner’s Publishers, under the direction of the stern Perkins. He agrees to take on Wolfe’s novel, but with the condition of serious revisions on the editor’s advice. The two of them have a long and amazing job, which will give the world the invaluable genius of the remarkable novelist and playwright Thomas Wolfe.

Perkins’s edits were given to Wolfe’s first two novels, Look at Your Home, Angel, and the bestseller About Time and the River.

The Lady in the Van

• Rating IMDB – 6.7
• Genre: Drama, comedy, biography
• UK production / 2015
• Budget: $6 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $41 387 687
• Directed by Nicholas Hytner
• Cast: Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent, Claire Hammond, George Fenton, Alex Jennings, Jamie Parker, Deborah Findlay, Roger Allam

Alan Bennett is a British playwright and writer who once wrote a theatrical play based on real events, which forms the basis of the script for this film.

Bennett lived in an apartment on Gloucester Crescent in Camden Town for 40 years. Somewhere in the middle of that time, he noticed a van parked outside his windows for several years. Alan met the owner of that van, an elderly homeless woman named Mary Shepherd, who was just hiding from the police here, suspecting that she had caused the accident. As a result, the two became great friends, and Mary stayed on Gloucester Crescent for as long as 15 years.

One of Bennett’s best-known works is the play The Madness of King George III, which was adapted into a 1994 movie, The Madness of King George. Alan wrote the script himself and won an Oscar for it.

Hemingway & Gellhorn

• Rating IMDB – 6.3
• Genre: Drama, melodrama, biography
• USA production / 2012
• Worldwide gross: $19 500 000
• Directed by Philip Kaufman
• Cast: Nicole Kidman, Clive Owen, David Strathairn, Rodrigo Santoro, Molly Parker, Parker Posey, Tony Shalub, Santiago Cabrera, Lars Ulrich, Peter Coyote

This picture is the impressive love and life story of a famous couple, the greatest war correspondent Martha Gellhorn and her husband, the brilliant writer Ernest Hemingway.

They first met in a Florida diner in 1936 and quickly grew to respect and then love each other. But the careers of both were not conducive to a quiet family life. The couple spent their honeymoon in Spain, where the brutal Civil War was raging. Martha was writing her essays and Ernest was sketching for a future novel. Five years later they divorced, but out of that marriage was born the brilliant novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Martha was Hemingway’s third wife and the only one to file for divorce herself.

Running with Scissors

• Rating IMDB – 6.1
• Genre: Drama, comedy
• USA production / 2006
• Budget: $12 000 000
• Worldwide gross: $7 329 618
• Directed by Ryan Murphy
• Cast: Annette Bening, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Alec Baldwin, Joseph Cross, Jill Clayburgh, Gwyneth Paltrow, Gabriel Union, Patrick Wilson

A screen adaptation of the memoir “Running with Scissors” by the American writer Augustine Burroughs, which recounts his childhood and adolescence.

Life is not easy for 12-year-old Augustine. His father is a hard drinker and his mother is obsessed with graphomania, and she has no time for her son. Gradually the mother loses her mind, the parents divorce, and Augustin finds himself in the mansion of her psychiatrist, Dr. Finch, which is home to many of the doctor’s adopted and biological children, as well as several patients. There are no rules in this house, it’s messy, and insanity lives right next door.

Burroughs’ books are usually memoirs-reflections on different stages of his eventful life.

Vor der Morgenröte

• Rating IMDB – 6.7
• Genre: Drama, Biography, History
• Austria, Germany, France production / 2016
• Directed by Maria Schrader
• Cast: Barbara Zukova, Thomas Lemarcus, Valerie Pachner, Nahuel Perez Biscayart, Aenn Schwartz, Josef Hader, Benedikt Erlingsson, Lenn Kudrjawicki, Irina Potapenko, Stephen Singer

A literary icon, Zweig was forced to spend his last years in exile, where he committed suicide with his wife, in Brazil in 1942. Maria Schrader’s film is a heartbreaking account of the genius writer’s last years in exile.

Zweig was the most widely read writer of the twenties and always loved his homeland. The action unfolds from the mid-1930s to 1942. It begins with a formal banquet, where Zweig bows out to those who greet him and declares that he didn’t expect to find so many friends in Brazil…

Zweig’s best-known work is The Chess Novel, adapted into the well-rated drama The King’s Game 2021.

The Happy Prince

• Rating IMDB – 6.2
• Genre: Drama, biography
• UK, Belgium, Italy, Germany production / 2018
• Worldwide gross: $2 621 992
• Directed by Rupert Everett
• Cast: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Emily Watson, Colin Morgan, Edwin Thomas, Franca Abategiovanni, Alistair Cameron, Anna Chancellor, Beatrice Dahl, Tom Colley

Another biographical film about Oscar Wilde, this time tragically recounting the last months of the famous writer’s life. After being imprisoned for indecent behavior, Wilde arrives at the commune of Dieppe, where he reunites with old friends.

Oscar takes the pseudonym Sebastian Melmont and tries to get on with his life, but soon breaks down and escapes to Naples with his former mistress Bosie, to whom his mother promises to help with money if she breaks up with the writer. Broken and devastated, Wilde returns to Paris, where he lives on handouts from old admirers of his talent and suffers from a developing illness.

Wilde always told the tale of The Happy Prince to his children at their best family times.

All Is True

• Rating IMDB – 6.3
• Genre: Drama, Biography, History
• UK production / 2018
• Directed by Kenneth Branagh
• Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Nonso Anozi, Lolita Chakrabarti, Darryl Clark, Jack Colgrave Hirst, John Daglish, Elinor de Roen

You can’t have too much Shakespeare! Another film, devoted to the last years of the greatest playwright, shows him as an ordinary man, a family man coping with his family’s problems.

In 1613, Shakespeare returns home to Stratford to finally live with his family. His wife Anne is an illiterate countrywoman with whom the writer has little in common. Susannah, the eldest daughter, is accused of adultery by her husband, Puritan Hall. The younger daughter, Judith, is angry at her father for underestimating her, thinking women to be foolish creatures. Shakespeare must discover the truth about his family, which he has turned a blind eye to for years.

The film was shot at Buckinghamshire’s classic heritage-listed Tudor castle.