‘I look at the footage to convince myself that you were alive’: how Ross McElwee made a film about unimaginable loss, grief and guilt

When his son died aged 27, the director could barely bring himself to watch his old clips of the boy. When at last he did, it was the genesis of an extraordinary project

Ross McElwee is the film-maker who spun home movies into art, framing himself and his friends and his son Adrian. The director used to film Adrian for a few minutes each month. He tracked the kid from infancy to adulthood, trying to catch the significant turns of his life. When tragedy struck it back-shadowed the footage. Maybe every home movie is a ghost story at heart.

It feels crass to compliment McElwee on his latest documentary, Remake, because it isn’t the picture he’d ever have chosen to make. It is instead a grief-struck tour-de-force: a magnificent film about film-making and its real-world repercussions. McElwee filmed Adrian because he loved him, but now fears he might have hurt him. So he sifts through the material in search of clues, addressing his son as though he’s still in the room. “I look at the footage to convince myself that you were alive,” he says. “But also to convince myself that you’re gone.”

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