THE BEND IN THE RIVER to Open, Executive Produced by Frances McDormand
The documentary follows a group of close friends across a span of fifty years.
THE BEND IN THE RIVER, a documentary by Robb Moss chronicling five decades in the lives of a group of close friends, is scheduled to open on Aug. 14. The film carries executive producer credits from Frances McDormand and Joel Coen.
Film Forum will present the US theatrical premiere of THE BEND IN THE RIVER, directed by Robb Moss and executive produced by Frances McDormand and Joel Coen, on Friday, August 14. A poignant, decades-spanning record of time passing and a specific generation caught in its forward march, the film had its world premiere at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival.
Filming five of his friends intimately for nearly fifty years, director Robb Moss invites us to reflect on what it means to inhabit a life fully, in its contradictions and continuities. Moss, a pioneer of personal documentary and a longtime professor at Harvard, began filming Barry, Danny, Cathy, Jeff and Jim in 1978, during one clothing-optional rafting trip through the Grand Canyon — resulting in his short documentary, RIVERDOGS (1982). He resumed shooting as they came to terms with middle age for his 2003 follow-up, THE SAME RIVER TWICE.
The final installment of a trilogy about Moss' free-spirited friends navigating their way through life, THE BEND IN THE RIVER now finds the group in their seventies and grappling with the choices they've made as individuals and as a generation. They've held jobs, been married, had children, divorced, remarried, helped raise grandchildren, dreamed, suffered, succeeded and survived. The film interweaves moments from the distant past with those of the recent present, with Moss' friends candidly reflecting on the beginnings of their time together and the divergent paths their lives have taken. As past and present fold into one another, these five sense the fragility of their lives, how memory reshapes experience and how meaning is made and remade.
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