El Mariachi is a 1992 American action film that was the debut of writer/director Robert Rodriguez. The Spanish language film was shot with a mainly amateur cast in the northern Mexican bordertown of Ciudad Acuña. The US$7,000 production was originally intended for the Mexican home video market, but executives at Columbia Pictures liked the film so much that they bought the American distribution rights. Columbia eventually spent several times more than the 16 mm film's original budget on 35 mm transfers, promotion, marketing and distribution.
The success of Rodriguez's directorial debut led him to create two further entries, Desperado (1995) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), in what came to be known as the Mexico Trilogy. In 2011, the film was inducted into the Library of Congress to be preserved as part of its National Film Registry for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
Read more about El Mariachi: Plot, Cast, Production, Awards