Name: Remake
Director: Ross McElwee
Released: 2025
Duration: 116 min

In his most devastatingly personal work to date – awarded at Venice and True/False – veteran auto-documentarian Ross McElwee probes his home movies for insights into his son’s death.

Adrian McElwee was just 27 when he died, in 2016 – a victim of the opioid crisis, having also struggled with bipolar disorder. He’d figured prominently in his father’s previous film, 2011’s Photographic Memory, in which the filmmaker was prompted by his growing distance from Adrian to retrace the steps of a sojourn from his own youth. In the painful aftermath of Adrian’s death, McElwee turned to his archive, in search of what he and his camera might have missed. Offsetting this emotion-laden investigation is another, almost satirical plot line involving a proposed adaptation of the film that put the director on the map, Sherman’s March (MIFF 1986). Together, the two threads point towards an inability to exert control over one’s own progeny.

A clear influence on the likes of John Wilson (The History of Concrete, MIFF 2026), McElwee, now in his late seventies, has long been an obsessive documenter of his own life, always bringing a wry intelligence and, at times, endearingly awkward humour to his filmed pursuits. In the more sober and reflective Remake, however, he finds himself questioning the limits of his chosen medium.

“A complex, layered contemplation of grief, memory, family ties and the meaning of film-making as a profoundly personal activity, Remake is a richly rewarding experience – emotionally, narratively and philosophically.” – Screen Daily