IFFBoston 2026 Narrative Documentary Spotlight Film

Filmmaker 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.