Is Truth Needed in Movies?

Nowadays a large number of documentary films exist but are they interesting to people? Of course, stories about murderers, maniacs and psychopaths can be intriguing even if 100% of the film is truth and even if the director did not add anything.

However, usually, if a documentary film tells us about an ordinary person, the story is likely to be a little boring because our life is not as colorful and fascinating as special effects and our fantasy.

I believe that a documentary film should, even must, be reworked, adapted, with new storylines, fictional characters and special effects. These points help to make the documentary movie more exciting, entertaining for the audience, not tedious.

To answer the question of what balance of truth and fiction in movies is acceptable to me, we need to understand what genre of cinematography we are watching. I prefer documentary movies that are more realistic, let’s say 80–90% of the truth, the rest of the genres can be completely created by the director: characters, plot, events can be the director’s fantasy, but no one has canceled the realism.

For me, a film is good if the events shown in it at least seem to be 60–70% real (it’s just that I don’t like fantasy and science fiction genres at all).