Which 1999 found-footage indie film is set around the legend of the Blair Witch?

The 1999 found-footage indie film built around the legend of the Blair Witch is The Blair Witch Project. Written, directed, and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, it follows three student filmmakers who enter the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, to investigate a local supernatural legend.

The film’s fictional mythology was developed before production, and much of the dialogue was improvised from a loose 35-page screenplay. Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard played versions of themselves as the supposedly missing filmmakers. The production shot roughly 20 hours of footage, later edited into an approximately 81-minute movie.

Its marketing deliberately blurred fiction and reality. Promotional materials presented the actors as missing or deceased, helping audiences wonder whether the footage was genuine. That campaign became one of the film’s most influential innovations, although the performers were alive and the story was fictional.

The movie premiered at Sundance in January 1999 and became a landmark independent success. A common mix-up is confusing it with The Last Broadcast, another earlier found-footage horror film, but that movie does not center on the Blair Witch legend.