Our favourite Olympic movies to watch during the Paris Games

For some of us, sports hold limited appeal until given the right context: a triumphant personal story, impossible odds, national pride, an intense rivalry. Then, suddenly, they have all the makings of a great drama.

With the absolute height of that drama – the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, a.k.a. Paris 2024 – quickly approaching, it seems only fitting to look at some of the best Olympic movies ever to grace the silver screen. These are films that take the unimaginable – the height of human physical, psychological, and emotional endurance – and present them in all their nail-biting glory for all the world to see.

Related: The best Scandinavian moments of the 2024 Olympics so far

While the Olympic movies on this list impart their own profound, surprising, and even humorous versions of everything we love about the Games – the rivalry! the pride! patriotism! the pageantry! – they also offer a look at some of the darker issues that are equally compelling: the doping, the sex, the class struggles, and the crime. After all, one thing that art and sports have in common is their ability to hold all of these things at once.

Be forewarned: You won’t see Chariots of Fire on this list. Yes, it is an iconic film; yes, it took place at the last Paris Games 100 years ago; yes, it is the only Olympics movie to ever win best picture at the Oscars (in 1982). But you already knew all that, and can probably hum the soundtrack by heart. Instead, consider this the list of the best Olympic films you haven’t seen yet – or should definitely watch again and again.

Let’s hear it for bisexual visibility – and in the 1980s, at that! Mariel Hemingway brings the grit, intensity, and vulnerability of long-distance running (and the relationships therein) to this 1982 film about Chris Cahill (Hemingway) and her teammate, lover, and friend Tory Skinner (played by real Olympian Patrice Donnely). At first glance, contemplating whether two women at the top of their sport can handle their emotions seems sexist and dated, even for the Reaganite Hollywood in which this was made. Yet the triumph here is the film’s ability to go deep on the very human challenges these athletes confront.

Very loosely based on a true story – the 1988 Calgary Olympics, which saw the very first Jamaican bobsled competitors – this film threads the needle between the ludicrous and consequential in order to give us a triumphant, fish-out-of-water, against-all-odds sports story. While the concept is a little on-the-nose (Jamaica! They don’t have snow there! Crazy!), Disney pulls it off with help from comic genius John Candy, in one of his final roles. We can’t help but cheer these racers all the way to the finish line.

The first effort from screenwriter Tony Gilroy (who would later bring us riveting gems like Michael Clayton and a slate of Bourne flicks), this film takes a tempermental, rich-girl figure skater (Moira Kelly) and pairs her with a faded professional hockey player as they attempt to triple-axel their way to Olympic gold. It sounds cheesy, but the actors’ chemistry and the film’s moody tone make what could have been a stumble into something sharp, smart, and impressively deft. Tens from every judge.

Many will remember 1997’s Prefontaine, starring an exhaustingly enthusiastic Jared Leto as Steve “Pre” Prefontaine, an elite long-distance runner who died in a car accident at the age of 24 in 1975. Without Limits, however, is the superior adaptation of that same story. It knows a thing or two about pacing – no pun intended – and keeps viewers rapt in its reveal of the tragic hero, now played by Billy Crudup. Monica Potter is irresistible as Pre’s love interest, while the late, great Donald Sutherland plays track and field coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman. It’s a great film that provides hope and tears in equal measure.

We’re going to skate to one song, and one song only. You might recognise that Blades of Glory line from the iconic Jay-Z and Kanye West track in which it’s sampled – the only comedy to hold such an honour. Co-written by Busy Phillips, Craig Cox, and Jeff Cox, the film is memorably about two fallen skaters: a crude bad boy, Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell), and the more genteel Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder, fresh from his breakout role in Napoleon Dynamite). With Amy Poehler and Will Arnett playing their adversaries, and the built-in humour of figure skating’s costumes, routines, and pageantry, the stage is set for a raucous 90 minutes.

Spoiler alert: the hero of this film does not end up on the podium. Based on real events, Eddie the Eagle is an absolutely charming story about overcoming adversity. It follows the story of Michael David Edwards (played gamely by Taron Egerton), a terribly far-sighted Brit from Gloucestershire who defied the odds, and his own country’s athletic body, to become the first Englishman to compete in ski jumping (at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary). Yet this is less a film for those who care deeply about winter sports than one for any person who's ever had kids, suffered bullies, or been told they weren’t good enough. Also featuring Hugh Jackman as Eddy’s dynamic, just-dark-enough coach with a past, it’s a film certain to make you feel like you’re flying.

Those born after Generation X might not realise how intense Olympic competition once was between the West (especially the United States) and the Soviet Union – every four years, it was everything. The real-life achievements of the 1980 US men’s hockey team – composed of a ragtag band of college players and led by coach Herb Brooks – against the heavily favored Soviet squad was nothing short of what this film’s title suggests. A somewhat faithful and altogether inspiring interpretation, Miracle is a commendable call to Olympic patriotism, bringing it to a warm and winning place.

Steven Spielberg’s interrogation of the kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, and Israel’s subsequent pursuit of those involved, is nothing short of brilliant. A number of films, including documentaries like One Day in September, do a remarkable job of unveiling this terrible story, but what Spielberg manages to do with Munich’s narrative is variably focus in – on the murders themselves; the intractable violence, tribalism, and victimhood of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the moral complexities of everyone involved—and pull back again.

Cheaters never win, right? As the New York Times recently pointed out in its investigation of banned substances used by Chinese swimmers ahead of Paris 2024, doping is absolutely rampant in high-level sport. Director and amateur cyclist Bryan Fogel’s documentary Icarus, which took home an Oscar, initially sought to shed light on the inadequacy of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s testing, but ended up unveiling a Russian state-sponsored doping program. With help from whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, Fogel’s inquiry becomes a riveting race against time across borders, through governmental and non-governmental agencies, to the very heart of sport. The devastating truth brought to light in this scintillating doc cuts deep into the Olympics’ deepest values – fair play, competition, human achievement – and the Games themselves.

As much about class, ambition, and family as it is about wrestling, Foxcatcher is another film that leaves us asking: How does Steve Carrell not have an Oscar? (He was at least nominated for this one!) Here he plays a scion to the Dupont fortune who first sponsors, and then increasingly inserts himself into the lives of the gold medal-winning Schultz brothers: Mark (Channing Tatum) and Dave (Mark Ruffalo). Delving into the psychology of top athletes as well as the imbalanced opportunities offered to them, Foxcatcher is a thoughtful, beautifully shot drama that neither shrinks from nor aggrandises its tough subject matter.

After her breakout role in The Wolf of Wall Street, Margot Robbie had her pick of projects– and did she ever choose well. It is quite possible that no other Olympic drama has ever received as much ink as the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan affair. Long story short: in the lead-up to the 1994 Olympics, Harding’s husband paid assailants to injure Kerrigan, her main competition for a spot at the Games. Harding, it was later determined, had some involvement, but long before the judge’s gavel came down, Harding was painted as a lowbrow conniver against Kerrigan’s beauty queen victim. Here, we get to see the whole sordid tale from the perspective of the “villain.” Robbie manages to use her considerable chops (for which she got an Oscar nom) to create a sympathetic Harding, while simultaneously having a great deal of fun. Which, not coincidentally, is what this movie is as well.

Think Lost in Translation, but at the Olympics and with consummation. In terms of budget, release, ambition, and more, this is the smallest film in this category (and the only one filmed in an actual Olympic Village: PyeongChang, 2018), written by Nick Kroll (the brains and many of the voices behind Big Mouth) and real-life couple Jeremy Teicher and Alexi Pappas, an actual Olympic runner. Pappas and Kroll also star; she as an introverted distance skier, and he as a volunteer dentist. The pair strike up a friendship and then a romance during their downtime in the strange, almost otherworldly location of the athlete’s village. It’s awkward, cute, fun, fearless – and, shot by Teichner guerrilla-style, it charms all the way to the finish line.