True Story is a 2015 American mystery thriller film that was directed by Rupert Goold in his directorial debut.

Based on the memoir of the same name by Michael Finkel, it stars Jonah Hill, James Franco and Felicity Jones, with Gretchen Mol, Betty Gilpin and John Sharian in supporting roles.

Franco plays Christian Longo, a man on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most-wanted list accused of murdering his wife and three children in Oregon.

In 2001, Christian Longo, an Oregon man whose wife and three children have been discovered murdered, is arrested by police in Mexico, where he had been identifying himself as a reporter for The New York Times named Michael Finkel.

He returns home to his wife Jill and struggles to find work as a journalist due to his public firing from the Times.

As the jury deliberates, Jill visits Longo in jail and tells him he is a narcissistic murderer who will never escape who he is.

After he is sentenced, he winks at Finkel, who, to his shock and rage, realizes Longo has been lying throughout their conversations, using him to make his testimony more believable.

Longo retorts by pointing out Finkel's success with his book about their encounters, leaving the reporter shaken.

[7] When Jill visits Longo in prison, she plays him a recording of "Se la mia morte brami" (If you desire my death), a madrigal by the Italian renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo.

She explains that despite its beauty, she can not hear it without remembering the facts of the composer's life: that Gesualdo murdered his wife, her lover, and their child.

The site's critical consensus reads: "James Franco and Jonah Hill make a watchable pair, but True Story loses their performances—and the viewer's interest—in a muddled movie that bungles its fact-based tale.