The film follows Schulman as he develops a unique friendship with a young painter, Abby, and her family. For nine months, Schulman maintains and nurtures a relationship with this family and falls in love with Abby's older sister, Megan, without ever meeting her, or the rest of the family, in person.

Schulman only knows the members of the family by maintaining constant contact via Facebook, Google chat and phone conversations.

However, when Schulman dedicates some time to finding out more about the family he discovers something that completely changes his perspective about social networking and the way people are manipulating the Internet.

Schulman never expected to share this intimate experience with the public since the project started as home footage.

 Nev Schulman, saying

"It sort of accidentally turned out to be a film. That was never the intention and I never dreamed that it would come out and that people would see it and that I would be doing interviews and talking about it. It just, sort of, totally organically happened."

"Catfish" has some competition at the theater. The film hits screens just as the glitzy Hollywood feature "The Social Network" about Facebook dominates the box-office.

Lindsay Claiborn, Reuters.