Abstract: In an age where audiovisual media have come to dominate practically every layer of communication, historical films, with their semi-fictional, dramatized portrayal of the past, have been able to exercise an increasingly significant influence on a society’s historical consciousness. This article, starting from the observation that most films use stories to address the past, focuses on the way narrative structures shape the cinematic representation of history. From there it is argued that, in order to appreciate the non-scientific historical perceptions movies generate, it is necessary to accept them as a form of history that approaches the past with its own questions and strategies and thus also comes up with its own answers and explanations.