Mockumentary movies: 5 fake documentaries, from outlaw country to a space station

A mockumentary is a film that depicts fictional events but is presented as a documentary: talking heads, handheld cameras, an interviewer off screen. The name joins "mock" and "documentary," and it was popularised in the mid 1990s.

The form matters because it borrows the look of fact. Researchers who study it argue that mockumentaries blur the line between fiction and factual media and push audiences to question how much a documentary can be trusted. Some are also cheap to make, as Micro Budget, below, shows.

Critics usually trace the modern mockumentary to This Is Spinal Tap (1984). Rob Reiner, an actor, in his first film as director, played a documentary maker following a fictional British heavy metal band on a US tour. Most of the dialogue was improvised. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2002, and later work such as Zelig (1983), the British series The Office (2001) and Borat (2006) sits in the same family. This guide picks 5 mockumentaries on Relay, released between 2005 and 2024. They cover a country singer, a frybread contest, vampire removal, a doomed film shoot and astronauts seen as wildlife.

What makes a mockumentary

• A fake crew. Someone inside the story is holding the camera, so the film can say why it was shot.
• Interviews. Characters explain themselves to the lens, and what they leave out is the joke.
• A straight face. The film never winks. The humor comes from taking an absurd subject seriously.
• A real genre underneath. Rock history, local news, nature films or film school projects are copied closely enough to be recognised.

5 mockumentaries to watch

The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico (2005)

Guy Terrifico is a country singer rumored to have died about 30 years earlier, and the film follows his return with a new album. Michael Mabbott, a Canadian director, made it as his first feature. Matt Murphy plays the title role.

The surprise is the cast: Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard and Levon Helm, all real musicians, appear as themselves and talk about Guy as if he were real. The film satirizes the outlaw country scene of the early 1970s, and critics have linked its hero to Gram Parsons, a country rock singer. It tied with Familia for Best First Canadian Feature Film at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival and was named one of Canada's Top Ten films of 2005.

Comedy

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At Stake: Vampire Solutions (2012)

Evan Shandling is a Memphis film student whose senior project looks at how the economy has hit local businesses. He drives into North Mississippi and finds one of the most dangerous: vampire removal.

The joke is the tone. A film school documentary about the working life of small trades, with a monster in the job description. It is an American comedy horror of 85 minutes, and a sequel, AS:VS Back in Business, followed in 2015.

Comedy

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More than Frybread (2012)

More Than Frybread was written and directed by Travis Holt Hamilton. It follows the first annual Arizona frybread championship, held in Flagstaff, with 22 contestants representing the 22 Native American tribes of Arizona. The film is a comedic pseudo-documentary, and the contest is invented.

Frybread has a history behind it. It grew out of the Navajo forced relocation known as the Long Walk, when government-supplied flour, sugar, salt and lard were turned into fry bread. Hamilton said he wanted a film that gave an excuse to shoot on numerous reservations and make new friends. Tatanka Means, Mary Kim Titla and Greg Fernandez, all actors, star.

Comedy

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Micro Budget (2024)

Morgan Evans, a former writer for The Onion, made this as his debut feature as director. Terry, a man from Iowa, moves his pregnant wife to Los Angeles to make a low-budget indie movie, while his cousin's crew films the process. Bobby Moynihan, Chris Parnell and Maria Bamford are in the cast.

The format was a practical choice as much as a creative one. Evans and his co-writer Patrick Noth chose a fake documentary about a film shoot because it let them shoot fully handheld and treat equipment as set dressing, which kept costs down. The makers name the films of Christopher Guest, a Spinal Tap co-writer and star, along with Spinal Tap itself and The Office, among their influences.

Comedy

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Homo Sapiens in Space (2019)

The shortest film here is an Irish comedy short from Damien Donnelly that runs 3 minutes 34 seconds. A narrator named Fredrick Atom-Burger treats astronauts on the International Space Station as a rare species, in the manner of a nature documentary.

It shows the form at its smallest: a narrator's voice, a familiar documentary style and one idea. It was inspired by NASA's achievements and pays tribute to documentary storytelling.

Comedy

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Where to go next

• So bad it's good movies
• Cult classic movies