07/20/2026
“McElwee has stated that REMAKE was his attempt to hold onto Adrian and also to let him go. He succeeds in that charge, but that tension he describes, of clinging to memory while desiring to relinquish it, defines McElwee’s vision to a tee…. REMAKE, like all of McElwee’s personal cinema, embody the passage of time itself. In other words, it’s the stuff of life.” —Vikram Murthi, Critic’s Pick
One day, two screenings — this Tue, Jul 21 at 1:00pm + 6:30pm — Ross McElwee’s REMAKE. (🎟️ Tickets at link in bio, or bit.ly/Belcourt-REMAKE)
McElwee has filmed his life since the 1970s — with his camera as both instrument and confession. His son Adrian was born into this practice, filmed from infancy, through adolescence, and into years that got harder. In 2016, Adrian died of a fentanyl overdose at 27. Drawing from decades of footage from Ross and Adrian — also a filmmaker — REMAKE asks questions that could only come after: What did the camera capture, what did it miss, and what did it do to the father-son relationship while both were still in the room? Threaded through is a stalled Hollywood effort to turn SHERMAN’S MARCH (now at the Belcourt through this Thu, Jul 23) into a fiction film, giving McElwee another angle on the distance between experience and its representation. Charleen Swansea, the unforgettable force of SHERMAN’S MARCH, reappears in REMAKE. (Synopsis adapted from the True/False Film Festival)
