12 Animated Movies And The Real People And Events That Inspired Them
BuzzFeed
·11 min read
Growing up I was a huge fan of cartoons and animated movies, and that love continues into adulthood. My palette for animation definitely evolved as I grew — I went from loving funny animals making jokes to furry animals delivering medicine across Alaska to cure sick children. Here are some of my favorite animated movies based on real people or events, and the stories that inspired them.
1.Pocahontas
Here's an image of Matoaka (aka Pocahontas) and the Colonial Settlement of Jamestown, Virginia:
2.Persepolis
It's a coming-of-age story set during the Iranian Revolution. The movie is a must-see, and the graphic novel is a must-read.
3.Charlotte
Charlotte Salomon was the definition of prolific, creating an autobiographical piece called Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel which translates to "Life? or theater?: A song-play."
4.Anastasia
This fairytale was based on the real legend of the Grand Dutches Anastasia of Russia who was the youngest daughter of the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. In reality, she and her family were killed by Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1918 when she was 18.
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin
5.Miss Hokusai
This film captures the beauty of what it feels like to create. Miss Hokusai tells the true story of a master Japanese artist, Katsushika Ōi, who lived in the shadow of her more famous father Katsushika Hokusai.
6.Grave of the Fireflies
Based on the short story by Akiyuki Nosaka, the film is about two siblings, a boy and a girl, surviving the final moments of World War II, specifically the fire bombings of Kobe. While the work is not directly autobiographical, it is inspired by the very real life of Akiyuki Nosaka, who lived through the very real events that inspired the film.
When Kobe was firebombed, Nosaka's adopted father was killed and his mother was badly injured. He ran away with his infant sister, but she died as well. He landed in a juvenile detention center for stealing where many of his fellow classmates died of starvation. He uses the power of storytelling to share his experiences with us through his short story which became the animated film.
7.Waltz with Bashir
It depicts the true life of its filmmaker, Ari Folman, recalling moments from his past that have stuck with him.
8.Tatsumi
The film was based on the 855-page autobiographical manga chronicling his life from 1945 to 1960. He’s credited with creating the Gekiga style of manga, which are comics that lean toward more dramatic, alternative, and/or adult stories.
9.Balto
Balto was an Alaskan Husky owned by Leonhard Seppala, who led a team of dogs on the final leg of a relay, where the mission was to deliver life-saving medicine to a small town in 1925. The destination was 500 miles away and was through the brutal Alaskan weather. One sled dog team would have taken a month, which was too slow, so they decided a relay was the answer.
10.Up
It's a story of love, loss, friendship, and resilience.
11.Flee
This is a true story narrated by the man it happened to firsthand. However, he uses an alias so that he may be his most truthful while protecting his safety.
Flee aims to uncover how it feels to have your reality rocked. Amin Nawabi turns into a refugee and must learn to survive that journey along the way. It's a story of the human condition as much as it is a story of what it feels like to be a refugee. Jonas Poher Rasmussen is the filmmaker, and friend of Amin, who turned his stories into this powerful animated film.
The two men trick the Indigenous inhabitants of El Dorado into believing they are gods so that they can be showered in golden treasures. Hernán Cortés is the looming threat the two con men have to evade in the end. His arrival in El Dorado would mean the end of this beautiful city. Even though the con men were not real, Hernán Cortés was most definitely real and he did end an empire.
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