The 11 Best Olympic Films of All-Time

‘Olympia’ (dir. Leni Riefenstahl, 1938)

There’s sports on film before ‘Olympia,’ and there’s sports on film after ‘Olympia.’ The IOC had commissioned documentaries about previous Olympic Games — most exist as purely filmed records of the competition, not as examples of cinematic artistry, with the possible exception being Riefenstahl mentor Arnold Franck’s 1928 ‘The White Stadium’ — but ‘Olympia,’ one of the ultimate examples of problematic cinema, gave sports filmmaking, and even televised sports broadcasting, an aesthetic template to build on in its presentation the 1936 Games. Riefenstahl used six cameras in Berlin’s Olympiastadion (still standing and hosting sports events today) to capture all angles of the competition, and many more cameras elsewhere, including attached to balloons for aerial views. The idea was that editing the image could result in a more kinetic presentation of sport. It’s sport transformed into art.

Then she added voiceover narration (basically in the same manner as broadcasts today, other than the overly pugnacious tone of the Nazi propagandist announcer) and other techniques any sports viewers are familiar with, including reaction shots of the audience. One of those reaction shots, repeated over and over, is, of course, of Adolf Hitler, somehow able to attend two weeks’ worth of competition rather than tend to the affairs of state. Yep, to an extent, all of this is to glorify the Führer and his brutal Third Reich, and in any index of great films ‘Olympia’ deserves to bear an asterisk marking that this is a propaganda film for the most toxic ideology the world has ever known. To her credit, Riefenstahl did see the beauty in Black American superstar Jesse Owens, as well, and most who watch ‘Olympia’ today will be struck by his greatness and defiance of Nazi propaganda far more than by the Nazi propaganda itself. —CB

‘Tokyo Olympiad’ (dir. Kon Ichikawa, 1965)

The story behind ‘Tokyo Olympiad’ is almost as interesting as the film itself. For the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, the Japanese government — eager to reintroduce themselves to the world after post-war rebuilding efforts — commissioned a documentary about the Games, looking for a straightforward, journalistic account of the Olympics. Filmmaker Kon Ichikawa, however, provided the exact opposite: a breathlessly cinematic wonder, capturing the Summer games in glorious widescreen, using slow motion and state-of-the-art techniques to create a lyrical, human look at the Games. After the documentary’s original release in Japan, the government forced Ichikawa to create a straightforward 93-minute version, which was the one that made its way overseas. But the 165-minute original is now readily available, and it’s a wonder, among the best films ever made about the triumph and beauty of sports. —WC

‘Downhill Racer’ (dir. Michael Ritchie, 1969)

It’s hard to think of a sports movie in a long time built around so singularly unlikable a character as Robert Redford’s David Chappellet in ‘Downhill Racer.’ This is someone who withholds all emotion or affection or regard from the people around him in his pursuit of Olympic glory as a downhill skier. And Redford, who ended up — as he did with ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ — shooting scenes at what became his Sundance Resort in Utah, is an extraordinary sphinx. This was a time when under-acting could be as valued as the florid scenery-chewing often preferred by the Oscars. Ritchie is extremely attuned to Redford’s process — even lingering at length on how Chappelet fixes his hair — and ends up creating a portrait of an existential loner worthy of midcentury literature (though to the film’s credit, it never valorizes his narcissism). It all builds up to a cosmic joke of an ending that doesn’t even bear any hint of tragedy or regret. —CB

‘Chariots of Fire’ (dir. Hugh Hudson, 1981)

Time has been kind to ‘Chariots of Fire.’ Looked at today, this British film about Cambridge sprinters competing at the 1924 Olympics in Paris almost plays like an experimental film: Its silences; its choice to elide major moments (such as Harold Abrahams on the podium receiving his gold medal, with the camera instead trained on the back of his coach, played by Ian Holm, banned from the Games and only hearing ‘God Save the King’ playing from afar); its emphasis on the interiority of its athletes (Is it the only Olympics movie ever to show that depression often results after winning a gold medal? A dopamine high like that leads to a major dopamine withdrawal); the choice to present a major moment like Abrahams’ crossing the finish line first in a far long shot that’s unedited and presented in real time; and that ubiquitous electronic score from Vangelis. That music was so famous, the main theme going to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, it suffered the tragedy of success. The fact that it was everywhere meant people overlooked what a singular pairing that was for a film set in the 1920s, what a goddamn precursor to Ryuichi Sakamoto, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and all of the non-orchestral film scoring that’s followed.

‘Chariots of Fire’ has often been called one of the weaker Academy Award winners for Best Picture, mainly because it beat ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and ‘Reds.’ If only more supposed Oscar-bait films could be as avant-garde as ‘Chariots of Fire,’ its singularity confirmed by how no other sports movie since has been able to copy its achievement into a formula. —CB

‘Personal Best’ (dir. Robert Towne, 1982)

In 1980, the United States (along with 65 other nations) boycotted the Olympics hosted in Moscow, in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. That might have been the moral choice, but it left plenty of athletes without the chance of a lifetime, and ‘Personal Best’ is a quietly moving look at how the larger controversy ended up impacting those pursuing their dreams. Robert Towne’s small but sweet drama stars Mariel Hemingway as track-and-field runner Chris, who strikes up a romance with her teammate, played by real-life athlete Patrice Donnelly. It sounds soapy, but the intimate drama delicately handles Chris’ bisexuality, and skillfully navigates the fraught relationship between her desire for love and her dedication to her sport. —WC 

‘Cool Runnings’ (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 1993)

Disney didn’t just have a powerhouse animation lineup in the ‘90s, the company had strong live-action releases throughout the decade, including this cheer-worthy gem very loosely based on the real-life story of the Jamaican bobsled team that competed at the 1988 Winter Olympics. How odd that deep into the 2010s there was still handwringing inside studio exec offices about whether films led by a ‘diverse’ cast could have major four-quadrant appeal, when there’s a movie like this headlined by four Black actors (Leon, Doug E. Doug, Rawle D. Lewis, and Malik Yoba) that grossed $154 million worldwide (55% of that international) on a $14 million budget? The film works so well today because it really is their story, even with the presence of John Candy as their (completely fictional) coach, a hard-drinking burnout who was stripped of his own Olympic medals for cheating — he’s relegated to more the comic relief or wisdom-spouting role films of this type long reserved for actors of color.

The Jamaican bobsled team face major challenges in adapting from their island home to the frigid clime of Calgary, the site of the 1988 Olympics, as well as some not-so-thinly-veiled racism from fellow competitors. Maybe it glosses over those issues a little too glibly by making the East German team the obvious villains (before oddly redeeming them), but it’s hard to imagine not having a lump in your throat when the broadcaster, commenting on our guys’ initial success, asks ‘Who are these guys?’ and our bobsledders’ families back home all shout in unison ‘They’re from Jamaica!’ Hell, I’m tearing up just writing that. —CB

‘One Day in September’ (dir. Kevin Macdonald, 1999)

It was dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s pretty good ‘Munich,’ but the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games received a definitive film version years earlier in Kevin Macdonald’s exemplary documentary ‘One Day in September.’ Featuring minimal narration from Michael Douglas, ‘One Day in September’ otherwise manages to recount the harrowing attack on the games using archival footage and interviews with survivors and the victims’ loved ones; Macdonald even tracked down and interviewed surviving terrorist Jamal Al-Gashey, who went into hiding somewhere in Africa. And, while it doesn’t necessarily take a side in the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict that caused the attack, the film doesn’t pull it’s punches in depicting the incompetence of the German government when it came to responding to the incident. The games themselves remain mostly in the background, but ‘One Day in September’ is a horrifying reminder of how reality can easily encroach on the idyllic international friendly competition that the Olympics seek to create. —WC

‘Foxcatcher’ (dir. Bennett Miller, 2013)

Many of the films on this list follow pretty typical tropes of athletic competition and drive to succeed. Bennet Miller’s ‘Foxcatcher’ is completely different; a bitterly dark and chilling look at the psychological toil that going for the gold can have on athletes. Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo are two gold medalist brothers with a tense rivalry that only deepens when they both join a team funded by multimillionaire John Eleuthère du Pont (an off-putting Steve Carell) and his private team to train for the upcoming Olympics. As Tatum’s Mark has a breakdown, du Pont develops a growing obsession with the young man, as Ruffalo’s Dave proves powerless to pull his brother from the darkness. Opaque and devoid of warmth or rousing cheer, ‘Foxcatcher’ is the rare movie to examine how the drive to win can destroy athletes rather than save them, and how the pursuit of greatness can come at a deeply devestating cost. —WC

‘I, Tonya’ (dir. Craig Gillespie, 2017)

The story of Tonya Harding is the type of lurid tabloid melodrama with a real core of sadness at its heart. Here was a woman with truly exceptional talent in her field, a figure skater who made history as the first American woman to land a triple axel, whose career was destroyed when her husband organized an assault on her rival Nancy Kerrigan to help her secure a spot in the 1994 Winter Olympics. A loose retelling of Harding’s life story, ‘I, Tonya’ isn’t flawless, but it succeeds as a character study of what could have driven Harding to take such actions, showing her as an underdog whose ‘white trash’ images causes her to be undervalued by the gatekeepers of the ice skating world. Margot Robbie, as the brash woman at the center, provides a wildly compelling performance as an Olympian whose drive to succeed and love of her sport lead her unwittingly to ruin. —WC

‘Olympic Dreams’ (dir. Jeremy Teicher, 2019)

The only narrative movie the IOC has ever allowed to be filmed in the Olympic Village, the place where the athletes reside during the Games, ‘Olympic Dreams’ is a curious movie to receive official IOC backing: It’s ultimately all about the struggles, especially in terms of mental health, the athletes face, and in no way a film about rah-rah triumph. It’s also about the army of thousands of volunteers required to pull off each Olympics, and that’s how we enter the story of ‘Olympic Dreams,’ via a dentist (Nick Kroll) who’s traveled from the U.S. to South Korea for the 2018 Pyeongchang Games to volunteer his dentistry to any athletes who may be in need of it — even just checkups. You never think about these kind of people who volunteer, but he’s living there in the Olympic village as well. He bonds with a cross-country skier, played by actual Olympian and actor Alexi Pappas (she’s a distance runner in real life), and the film from there dives deep into the loneliness so many at the Games feel, and how loneliness in their lives outside the Olympics drives their desire to participate in the first place. There’s a scene where Pappas’s character is so desperate for human connection that she wants the dentist to touch her thyroid, which will haunt you forever for what it says about the lengths we’ll all go to just to try to connect. —CB

‘The Boys in the Boat’ (dir. George Clooney, 2023)

It’s a cliché, but it’s true that ‘The Boys in the Boat’ is the type of crowd-pleasing, adult delight that Hollywood just isn’t making anymore. George Clooney adapts the non-fiction book by Daniel James Brown, which tells the true story of the 1936 University of Washington rowing team and their quest to compete for the gold at the Summer Olympics (the same Olympics documented by ‘Olympia.’) It’s exactly what you would expect from that logline: a rousing, ‘dudes rock’ guy-cry inspirational film about boys being friends and doing their best and sticking it to Hitler by winning gold medals. And yet, Clooney provides sturdy, handsome direction, and the solid cast — including great lead performances from Callum Turner and Joel Edgerton — makes it a crowd pleaser that genuinely pleases. —WC