El Mariachi (1992)

El Mariachi (transl. The Musician) is a 1993 Spanish-language American independent neo-Western action film and the first part of the saga that came to be known as Robert Rodriguez's Mexico Trilogy. It marked the feature-length debut of Rodriguez as writer and director. The film was shot with a mainly amateur cast in the northern Mexican border town of Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico across from Del Rio, Texas, the home town of leading actor Carlos Gallardo as the title character, an aspiring musician being mistaken for a recently escaped convict. The US$7,225 production was originally intended for the Mexican home-video market, but executives at Columbia Pictures liked the film and bought the American distribution rights. Columbia eventually spent $200,000 to transfer the print to film, to remix the sound, and on other post-production work, then spent millions more on marketing and distribution.

The success of Rodriguez's directorial debut led him to create two sequels (Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico) with Antonio Banderas taking over from Gallardo for the character, though Gallardo co-produced both films and had a minor role in Desperado.

The film received positive reviews from critics. In 2011, El Mariachi was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film is also recognized by Guinness World Records as the lowest-budgeted film ever to gross $1 million at the box office.