In ‘Remake,’ Ross McElwee navigates the loss of his son

Ross McElwee has often set out to make a film about one thing, only for it to become about something else entirely.

Perhaps the best example is his 1986 film “Sherman’s March.” It started as a Civil War documentary but switched focus to his own love life. It’s a natural consequence of McElwee’s particular style of first-person documentary filmmaking, capturing real life scenarios as they play out in front of him.

His most recent film, “Remake” (2025), began similarly, as a wry documentary about a Hollywood producer’s attempt to remake “Sherman’s March” as a fiction film. But everything changed after the sudden, tragic loss of his 27-year-old son, Adrian, to a fentanyl overdose in 2016. Read More.