American Movie - The Making of Northwestern

Mark Borchardt attempts to finance his dream project by completing Coven (1997), the micro-budget horror short he abandoned years before. In Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, the DIY filmmaker enlists his mother, eighty-two-year-old uncle, and a local cast of oddballs to push past internal and external roadblocks. Inspired by THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE SEVENTH SEAL, and his upbringing amid grey skies, rusty cars, and ranch houses on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side, he endures two years of family strain, financial decline, and spiritual crisis in his obsessive pursuit of the American Dream.