Filmmaker Ross McElwee has spent forty years recording himself and his family, creating documentaries that chronicle the shifting contours of American society through the lens of personal history. His son Adrian grew up inside those films, and eventually began experimenting with the camera himself. When a Hollywood producer acquires the rights to adapt McElwee’s 1986 breakthrough SHERMAN’S MARCH into a work of fiction, twenty-year-old Adrian sees a chance for his father to finally reach a wider audience. As the adaptation stalls, Adrian gets swept into a deepening drug addiction and dies from a fentanyl overdose, leaving behind hours of personal video footage. Retracing Adrian’s final years, McElwee reckons with what his camera captured and what remained hauntingly out of frame. As he reflects on a lifetime behind the camera, Ross’s own effort to remix and remake the movie that Adrian never got to finish takes on new significance. An ever-expanding hall of mirrors built from decades of home movies, REMAKE is both McElwee’s attempt to hold onto his son, and to let him go.
Official Selection
Venice Film Festival 2025
Official Selection
True/False Film Festival 2026
“Lovelorn, thoughtful and deeply moving, this is a film you’ll really want to talk about.”
Phil de Semlyen
Time Out
“An emotionally piercing documentary... meaningful and poignant”
Warren Cantrell
The Playlist
“A profound and piercing portrait of loss”
Jordan Mintzer
The Hollywood Reporter
