10 Amazing Movies Made On Shockingly Small Budgets

2. Tarnation - $218

Tarnation was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival, and it was the winner of the Best Documentary Award at the National Society of Film Critics and the Independent Spirits. This was all for a movie that cost $218.

The documentary from Jonathan Couette tells the story of his relationship with his mentally ill mother using old footage from Super 8 cameras, VHS tapes and photographs. Couette made the entire thing on iMovie, so he wasn’t even using any sort of premium editing software.

It soon got the attention of a lot of important people including Gus Van Sant, and so it was set to premiere at Sundance. Yet the movie was so low budget, Couette couldn’t even afford to have a film print made for the festival, so that nearly didn't even happen. Luckily a distributor stepped in to help out, and they later spent $400,000 on film prints and music to bring Tarnation to theaters.

Most of the film itself barely cost anything, though, a pretty inspiring example of how a director who has a good story can make something truly great with essentially no resources whatsoever. It ended up grossing $592,000 at the box office, so roughly 2,700 times its budget.