For filmmaker Ross McElwee, his home movies were shot with as much care and purpose as the candid, personal documentaries he presented to wider audiences — but for an artist who trades in autobiography, private memories will inevitably bleed into public ones, and in his complex, self-confronting and eventually shattering new film Remake, the line is erased entirely. (...) A highlight of this year’s Venice official selection that has since played major docfests including IDFA, Remake is as emotionally overwhelming as one might expect, but far from a one-note grief memoir. There’s tender self-examination here, and even spry humor as McElwee traces a second narrative track that gives the film its title — as outside producers approach him with a proposed dramatic remake of his classic 1985 documentary Sherman’s March.
Variety