Ross McElwee assembles decades of footage of his son Adrian, confronting time, grief, and authorship; while a stalled Sherman’s March remake haunts the margins.
Director: Ross McElwee
Runtime: 116
Fest Year: 2026
Ross McElwee has filmed his life since the 1970s. Sherman’s March (1986), Time Indefinite (1993), Bright Leaves (2003)—his camera is both instrument and confession. His son, Adrian, was born into this practice, filmed from infancy, through adolescence, and into years that got harder. In 2016, Adrian died of a fentanyl overdose at 27. Drawing from decades of footage from Ross and Adrian—also a filmmaker—Remake asks questions that could only come after: What did the camera capture, what did it miss, and what did it do to the father-son relationship while both were still in the room? Threaded through is a stalled Hollywood effort to turn Sherman’s March into a fiction film, giving McElwee another angle on the distance between experience and its representation. Charleen Swansea, the unforgettable force of Sherman’s March, reappears in Remake, which won the Golden Globe Prize for Documentary. This is the film’s North American premiere. (YF)