AMERICAN MYSTIC is a documentary about twenty-somethings, each a member of a fringe religious community, who have separated themselves from mainstream America in order to live immersed in their faiths. The film intertwines very intimate, apolitical portraits of three individuals in depressed areas of the country trying to lead more extraordinary, mystical lives: a Spiritualist in the former revivalist district of upstate New York; a Lakota sundancer in the badlands of South Dakota; and a pagan priestess living off the grid in old mining country in southern California. Rather than an analytical, journalistic approach, AMERICAN MYSTIC takes a personal, visually lush approach, immersing the viewer in the subjects’ experience of their controversial faiths through their own words and worship.
