In 1973, the Loud family became a television sensation of a new kind.  It was long before a metal rock star showed his eccentric family on the small screen and decades before housewives had screaming matches with each other on camera in public.

CINEMA VERITE tells the behind-the-scenes story of the groundbreaking 12-hour PBS documentary series “An American Family,” which chronicled the lives of the Louds in the early 1970s and catapulted the Santa Barbara family to notoriety while creating a new genre:  the reality TV series.  Oscar®, Golden Globe and Emmy® nominee Diane Lane (“Secretariat,” “Unfaithful”), Oscar® and Golden Globe winner Tim Robbins (“Mystic River,” “Dead Man Walking”) and Golden Globe and Emmy® winner James Gandolfini (“Where the Wild Things Are,” HBO’s “The Sopranos”) star in the HBO Films presentation, directed by Oscar® nominees Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (“The Nanny Diaries,” HBO’s “American Splendor”) and written by David Seltzer (“The Omen,” “Punchline”). 

CINEMA VERITE debuts SATURDAY, APRIL 23 (9:00-10:45 p.m. ET/PT).