Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation is a 1986 cinéma vérité documentary film written and directed by Ross McElwee.

[4][5] The film follows a repetitive narrative pattern: McElwee becomes enamored with various women, eventually developing feelings for each of his subjects, only to have his romantic hopes dashed.

For Sherman's March, I used a miniature Nagra SN, a very highly developed piece of recording equipment that could fit on my belt.

[8]McElwee set out to film Sherman's March with just a $9,000 grant (equivalent to $25,496 in 2023),[5] and began conducting mostly impromptu interviews.

"I guess what my conversations have that conventional interviews don't is a serendipitous quality, and emotional charge that has something to do with the personal connection between the subject and the film-maker.

[9] Principal photography lasted about five months, and McElwee estimated that he shot about 25 hours of footage: I was almost always ready to shoot.

'[8]In 1985, Jay Carr of The Boston Globe called McElwee a "Tarheel Woody Allen" and the film "like a series of variations on loneliness, funny and sad" but "never self-pitying," "sustain[ing] its loopy absurdist tone, reveling in the post-Civil War ironies of the misunderstood Sherman, identifying with them.

[12] Sherman's March was awarded the Grand Jury prize in the documentary category at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival.

"[13] A 1998 review in The Austin Chronicle proclaims McElwee "a modern master of cinéma vérité — rough, real-life documentary filmmaking that seeks to expose a subject's soul through its very lack of polish.