Remake (Remake)

Ross McElwee

In Remake, filmmaker Ross McElwee turns his lens on the passage of time and the uneasy space between documenting life and understanding it. The film traces McElwee’s relationship with his son Adrian, and the fragile bond the camera created between them while Adrian was alive, and now that he’s gone. Drawing from decades of footage, some shot by Ross, some by Adrian, the film becomes a layered excavation of memory and image making. Threaded through is the ghost of another project: a stalled effort by Hollywood to fictionalize McElwee’s 1986 classic, Sherman’s March. What emerges is a work shaped by absence and propelled forward by the urge to keep looking, even when there's no clear story left to tell.

USA 2025, '116

DIRECTOR: Ross McElwee

SCENARIO: Ross McElwee

CAMERA: Ross McElwee, Adrian McElwee

MONTAGE: Ross McElwee, Joe Bini

PRODUCERS: Mark Meatto, Ross McElwee

FESTIVALS & AWARDS:

Millennium Docs Against Gravity (2025)

Ross McElwee

Ross McElwee is an American documentary filmmaker whose work blends autobiography, cultural observation, and humor. His breakthrough film Sherman’s March won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. McElwee has made ten feature-length documentaries, which have premiered at such festivals as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, and Venice three times. He has received numerous career honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Pennebaker Award. In 2005, MoMA presented a full retrospective of his work, later shown in Paris, Seoul, Quito, Madrid, Portugal and Moscow. In 2024, The French Ministry of Culture awarded McElwee the rank of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres for his filmmaking. McElwee taught courses in documentary filmmaking in Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies for over twenty years. He retired in 2024 and is now Professor Emeritus based at Harvard, where he continues to work on his films.