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The Most Compelling Real Life Stories Brought To Film

The Oscars and the hubbub of awards season now settling into memory and looking back on 2012, it was a very good year for glorious portraits of actual individuals in action. As we celebrate the success of Best Picture Argo (such an understatement!) and fellow nominees Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty, it seems a perfect time to take a look back at some of the other most compelling real life stories brought to film.

Sam Waterston and Haing S. Ngor in The Killing Fields

Silkwood

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Director: Mike Nichols

Like Crystal Lee Sutton and Erin Brockovich, Karen Silkwood never imagined that she would be called upon to face such a foe. In this case, one could argue that Goliath won, but still we know her story, and still the Philistine army suffered.

A blue-collar metallurgy worker in an Oklahoman Kerr-McGee plutonium plant, Silkwood discovered in 1974 that faulty rods had been produced, and that management had falsified safety and inspection records. With that, her life turned to radioactive nightmare, galvanizing her to surreptitiously gather proof for the New York Times.

Intense, desperate, and deeply moving, Silkwood paints the plight of those lacking the wherewithal to stage the fight, indicts the delusional moral turpitude of those complicit for their own benefit, and inspires us toward the greater good, both for its own sake and in honor of those who fought before us.

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