American Movie

American Movie is a documentary about Mark Borchardt, an independent filmmaker in Wisconsin who sets out to complete a low-budget horror short called Coven. When his larger ambitions stall and the people helping him lose confidence in the project, he turns back to the partly finished footage, relying on money borrowed from his family and earned at his cemetery job, along with help from his parents and his friend Mike Schank, to finish it and sell copies on VHS. Shot over roughly two years, the film follows his persistence through financial difficulty and personal strain as he tries to fund the work that matters to him.

Chris Smith directed and produced the film with Sarah Price. It was the first of the features Smith directed, according to the chronological list of his work, and it precedes later documentaries including Collapse, Fyre and "Sr.". The cast is made up of Borchardt and the people around him, among them Schank, actor Tom Schimmels, and Borchardt's mother and brothers, playing themselves.

Released in 1999, the film runs 104 minutes. It earned about 1 million USD at the worldwide box office. On IMDb it holds 7.8/10 from 21,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.6/10 from 288 votes. A film critics' rating of 8.5/10 from 51 reviews places it above both audience scores.