NEWS
BIO
July 28, 2025
Remake Set to Premiere at Venice 2025
We’re honored to share that Remake, Ross McElwee’s long-awaited documentary, will premiere at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on September 3rd.
This marks Ross’s return to Venice fourteen years after his last feature, Photographic Memory, premiered there. Remake is in its final phase of post production, and we need your help to cross the finish line. We’ve decided to launch a fundraiser to help support our finishing efforts which include sound and color, subtitling, accessibility, and hiring a publicity team both in the US and Europe. We’re calling on you to help us spread the word so we can not only finish the film but so we can make sure Ross and his crew are able to attend the premiere screening in Venice, which would of course be a powerful full-circle moment.
Every contribution big or small brings us one step closer to Venice.
Donate Here
About Remake
In Remake, 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.
From Ross
“It’s been fourteen years since I released my last film, Photographic Memory. What animated that film was the sense that I no longer understood my son, Adrian, the way I once thought I did. As a child, Adrian liked being filmed, and I liked filming him. It was a process that linked us. But as the years went by, things changed – for him and for me.
When Adrian died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in the winter of 2016, I wasn’t sure I would make another film. Eventually I started going through my home movies again, all these accumulated moments with my son, who was now no longer here. And then I began to look at what he'd filmed too.
Remake is both my attempt to hold onto Adrian, and to let him go.”
Thank You
To those of you who have followed Ross’s work over the years: thank you. Your loyalty, curiosity, and thoughtful engagement have helped Remake get to this point. You’ve given Ross’ films life long after they left the editing room. Now, as Remake prepares to step into the world, we invite you to help us take this final step together.
With deep gratitude,
The Remake Team
In Remake, 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.
From Ross
“It’s been fourteen years since I released my last film, Photographic Memory. What animated that film was the sense that I no longer understood my son, Adrian, the way I once thought I did. As a child, Adrian liked being filmed, and I liked filming him. It was a process that linked us. But as the years went by, things changed – for him and for me.
When Adrian died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in the winter of 2016, I wasn’t sure I would make another film. Eventually I started going through my home movies again, all these accumulated moments with my son, who was now no longer here. And then I began to look at what he'd filmed too.
Remake is both my attempt to hold onto Adrian, and to let him go.”
Thank You
To those of you who have followed Ross’s work over the years: thank you. Your loyalty, curiosity, and thoughtful engagement have helped Remake get to this point. You’ve given Ross’ films life long after they left the editing room. Now, as Remake prepares to step into the world, we invite you to help us take this final step together.
With deep gratitude,
The Remake Team