Plot

Young filmmakers document their colleague's budding online friendship with a young woman and her family which leads to an unexpected series of discoveries.

In late 2007, filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost sensed a story unfolding as they began to film the life of Ariel's brother, Nev. They had no idea that their project would lead to the most exhilarating and unsettling months of their lives. A reality thriller that is a shocking product of our times, Catfish is a riveting story of love, deception and grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue.—Universal Pictures

Two filmmakers, Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman, start video documenting the life of Nev, Ariel's brother. Nev strikes up a friendship with an 8-year-old girl, Abby, on Facebook and soon several members of her family are also Nev's friends. His relationship with her older half-sister Megan takes a more romantic turn. From on though strange things start to happen and it appears that not everything is as it would seem.—grantss

Filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost document a story involving Ariel's brother, Nev, a 24-year-old New York-based photographer, and Abby, from rural Michigan who contacts Nev via Facebook, asking for permission to make a painting from one of his photographs.—IMDb Editors

Nev suspects that the "sexy" half sister of the 8 year old painter and the painter Abby herself are fakes since when he hears a video of Abby's sister singing, he realizes that the voice is "borrowed' from a pop singer. When he tracks Abby down he finds out she is not a painter and is not in contact with her half sister. But further research through "contacts of contacts" on Facebook shows that the true painter is a homebound woman who has given up a career to mother a severely retarded son,and the Facebook fantasies are all she has. Nev forgives her and retains her as a friend, even accepting a portrait of himself that she subsequently mails him. At the end Angela's husband says that some people are like "catfish" added to preserve the flavor of "codfish which otherwise would fade and become dull in a preserve.