- Director: Alex Mar
- Country: U.S.A
- Year: 2010
Set against the rich, color-soaked backdrop of America’s rural landscapes, American Mystic is a bold documentary that braids together the stories of three young Americans who have chosen to sacrifice comforts in order to embrace the fringes of alternative religion. The film follows Chuck, a Lakota Sioux sundancer in the badlands of South Dakota; Morpheus, a pagan priestess living off the grid in northern California’s old mining country; and Kublai, a Spiritualist medium in the former revivalist district of upstate New York. In the radical, separatist spirit of early America, each has extracted himself from the mainstream in order to live immersed in his faith and seize a different way of life. It is a film, as one critic wrote, about “people’s struggle to maintain their deeply held beliefs in a world that doesn’t share them.”
The film’s director, Alex Mar, will be available to answer questions about the making of the film throughout the month. Have a question? Go ahead and post it in the comments below, and Alex will get back to you.