Introduction

Thank you for hosting a screening of the award-winning documentary feature film Remake.

For nearly forty years, filmmaker Ross McElwee has turned his camera on his own life - chronicling romance, marriage, family, and loss. His son, Adrian, grew up in front of that camera, and eventually picked one up himself. When a Hollywood producer sets out to remake McElwee's 1986 breakthrough Sherman’s March as a fiction film, Adrian sees it as his father's long-overdue shot at wider recognition. But the adaptation stalls for years, and meanwhile Adrian’s life unravels into addiction. In 2016, Adrian dies of a fentanyl-related death at his father's home. Drawing on decades of footage, some shot by Ross, some by Adrian himself, Remake becomes an act of grief, reckoning, and love: a father searching the frames he kept for the son he couldn't save. Every screening of Remake is unique because each audience member and community brings different experiences of love, loss, recovery and hope. This guide is designed to help you create an environment where those experiences can be shared safely, respectfully and meaningfully.

Screenings can become:
- conversations
- acts of remembrance
- community healing
- spaces that reduce stigma
- catalysts for policy change
- opportunities for people to find support

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We hope through this guide to support you to create a space where you can reflect together on how the story of Remake resonates in your own lives, listen deeply to one another, and connect with hope.