Film à clef

A film à clef or film à clé ([film‿a kle], French for "film with a key"), is a film describing real life, behind a façade of fiction. "Key" in this context means a table one can use to swap out the names. It is the film equivalent of the roman à clef.

Notable films à clef

  • is based on Federico Fellini's experience suffering from "director's block."
  • Annie Hall, believed to be a version of Woody Allen's own relationship with Diane Keaton (whose birth name is Diane Hall). Allen has denied this in interviews, however.
  • Citizen Kane, a thinly disguised biographical film about William Randolph Hearst.
  • The Celebration was based on an alleged real-life story that director Thomas Vinterberg heard on Danish radio.
  • Magnolia, is loosely inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson's experience in dealing with his father's death from cancer.
  • Adaptation.; while parts of the film are adapted from Susan Orlean's non-fiction book The Orchid Thief, most of the film is a heavily fictionalized account of Charlie Kaufman's difficulty in adapting the book into a screenplay.
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