Remake

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Remake

Jul 2026

1h 54m

Documentary

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100%

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36 Reviews

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Fewer than 50 Ratings

Filmmaker Ross McElwee has spent forty years recording himself and his family, creating documentaries that chronicle the shifting contours of American society through the lens of personal history. His son Adrian grew up inside those films, and eventually began experimenting with the camera himself. When a Hollywood producer acquires the rights to adapt McElwee's 1986 breakthrough SHERMAN'S MARCH into a work of fiction, twenty-year-old Adrian sees a chance for his father to finally reach a wider audience. As the adaptation stalls, Adrian gets swept into a deepening drug addiction and dies from a fentanyl overdose, leaving behind hours of personal video footage. Retracing Adrian's final years, McElwee reckons with what his camera captured and what remained hauntingly out of frame. As he reflects on a lifetime behind the camera, Ross's own effort to remix and remake the movie that Adrian never got to finish takes on new significance. An ever-expanding hall of mirrors built from decades of home movies, REMAKE is both McElwee's attempt to hold onto his son, and to let him go.

Odie Henderson

Boston Globe

3h

3.5/4

"Remake" becomes a heartbreaking eulogy and one of the year’s best documentaries. It’s a final father-son chat with someone who will never hear the words.

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Aisha Harris

NPR

7h

You will know if you can handle it, and if you believe you can, it's absolutely worth it.

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Ty Burr

Ty Burr's Watch List (Substack)

2d

4/4

Editing finds visual and thematic rhymes across the decades of Adrian’s life in ways that can take your breath away, and at times McElwee just gives himself over to upwellings of imagery and light, as if he were trying to reverse-engineer memory itself

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Laura Hutson Hunter

Nashville Scene

12h

Remake reexamines Sherman’s March under a new, devastating rubric

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Robin Clifford

Reeling Reviews

Jul 22

B

I do not know if "Remake" is a continuation of the filmmaker’s intrusive camera or an apology to a son whose life ended too soon, I hope for that latter.

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Erik Childress

Movie Madness Podcast

Jul 20

4/4

The title of this masterful film covers not only a Hollywood attempt to turn McElwee’s seminal work into who-knows-what, but also the attempt to reconcile paternal mistakes, and the transference of filmed memories into something that will outlast us all.

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Robert S

@rodash Jul 16

For those who know McElwee's films, it's a reunion, albeit often painful, with old friends. Some of the editing is brilliant, but the film ends up spinning its wheels and diminishing its power. Nevertheless, it's a must see for McElwee fans.

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Ian B

@RT59743223 Jul 11

Nothing else quite like it. A category of its own without question. Beautiful, haunting, and so stimulating at times it was hard to process as a true account, given it follows someone’s entire life, from start to finish. A film likely to inspire many filmmakers, and creatives, to come.

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Stephen C

@bob25009 Jul 10

The worldwide gross is $31,199.00.

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Ross McElwee

Director

Joe Bini

Director

Adrian McElwee

Self

Charleen Swansea

Self

Mark Meatto

Producer

Ross McElwee

Executive Producer

Remake: Trailer 1

2:01

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Synopsis

Filmmaker Ross McElwee has spent forty years recording himself and his family, creating documentaries that chronicle the shifting contours of American society through the lens of personal history. His son Adrian grew up inside those films, and eventually began experimenting with the camera himself. When a Hollywood producer acquires the rights to adapt McElwee's 1986 breakthrough SHERMAN'S MARCH into a work of fiction, twenty-year-old Adrian sees a chance for his father to finally reach a wider audience. As the adaptation stalls, Adrian gets swept into a deepening drug addiction and dies from a fentanyl overdose, leaving behind hours of personal video footage. Retracing Adrian's final years, McElwee reckons with what his camera captured and what remained hauntingly out of frame. As he reflects on a lifetime behind the camera, Ross's own effort to remix and remake the movie that Adrian never got to finish takes on new significance. An ever-expanding hall of mirrors built from decades of home movies, REMAKE is both McElwee's attempt to hold onto his son, and to let him go.

Director: Ross McElwee, Joe Bini
Producer: Mark Meatto, Ross McElwee
Screenwriter: Ross McElwee
Distributor: Music Box Films
Production Co: Giant Squid, Impact Partners
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Jul 10, 2026, Limited
Runtime: 1h 54m