Drama genre By Andrew smithThemes and ideas * The drama genre of film usually consists of realistic characters with realistic situations which deal with emotional themes, set commonly in urban areas (i.e. step up.) For our group we have decided to do a dance/drama film set in Dagenham, which shows the characters coming together at a dance class and growing as a group and helping each other with there problems.Timeline of drama genre films. The drama genre of films primarily started to take off during the 1950's they were often tools to teach the audience about specific emotions |.e. depression or tragedy, The 60s-70s focused more on war flicks given a more realistic adaptation of war and also showed the trials and hardships of war and are considered classics. The 80s-90s put more emphasis on highly emotional themes dealing with more modern themes such as disease and families, however hope also became a larger theme as shown in “the shawshank redemption”. The 2000's focused more on epics and showed a declinde of romantic drama films but films like “slumdog millionaire” and “Brokeback mountain” won many oscars/awards etc..