“Based on a true story.” The Toronto International Film Festival is full of these fact-based movies: Mandela, 12 Years a Slave (19th-century free black Solomon Northup), The Fifth Estate (Julian Assange), Rush (race car rivals James Hunt and Niki Lauda), The Railway Man (Japanese torture camp survivor Eric Lomax) and Parkland (tracing the events at a Dallas hospital on Nov. 22, 1963). From the antebellum American South to modern South Africa, from World War II to WikiLeaks, from JFK to Formula 1, inspirational or just informational historical dramas are crowding the Toronto schedule this year.

Actually, this year and every year — because TIFF is a showcase for Oscar-wannabe films, and nothing appeals to the members of the Motion Picture Academy quite so much as a true story rouged into a stirring drama. Since 2000, bio-pics have accounted for 21 of the Best Picture nominees and two of the…