Remake

Director: Ross McElwee

Cast: Adrian McElwee, Charleen Swansea

Renowned documentarian Ross McElwee poignantly grieves the death of his son by examining a life captured on screen.

For decades, veteran American documentarian Ross McElwee captured his son’s growing up on screen, from his wife’s pregnancy in 1993’s Time Indefinite to the delicate nature of their maturing relationship in 2011’s Photographic Memory. In Remake, the director processes Adrian’s devastating death by looking back at extensive archival footage shot by two generations of McElwee men, presented alongside a stalled attempt to fictionalize his 1986 classic doc, Sherman’s March. The result is both a touching elegy and a piercing dissection of memory, image, and the blurry boundaries of personal documentary filmmaking. (RAFA SALES ROSS)