Ross McElwee
Ross McElwee is an American documentary filmmaker whose work blends autobiography, cultural observation, and humor. His breakthrough film Sherman’s March won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. McElwee has made ten feature-length documentaries, which have premiered at such festivals as Berlin, Cannes, and Venice three times. He has received numerous career honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Pennebaker Award. In 2005, MoMA presented a full retrospective of his work, later shown in Paris, Seoul, Quito, Madrid, and Moscow.
The celebrated filmmaker revisits decades of personal footage after the sudden death of his son, weaving suddenly tragic family archives withan ongoing attempt to realize a Hollywood remake of his classic 1985 essay film Sherman’s March.
In 1985 McElwee set out to document the lingering traces of General Sherman's march through the American South. He instead created a landmark autobiographical essay film in which history gives way to self-portraiture, a method he would later reexamine with Remake (2025), which is also screening at this festival.
