Docudrama

In radio and television programming and staged theatre, a docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. A docudrama may be filmed or written.

In the core elements of its story a docudrama strives to adhere to known historical facts, while allowing a greater or lesser degree of dramatic license in peripheral details, and where there are gaps in the historical record. Docudrama producers sometimes choose to film their reconstructed events in the actual locations in which the historical events occurred. Dialogue may include the actual words of real-life persons, as recorded in historical documents.

As a neologism, the term docudrama is often confused with docufiction. However, unlike docufiction – which is essentially a documentary filmed in real time, incorporating some fictional elements – docudrama is filmed at a time subsequent to the events it portrays. Docudrama is also called documentary drama or it can be called Documentary Theatre.