NEW YORK, NY.- Film Forum will present the U.S. theatrical premiere of Robb Moss’ The Bend in the River on Friday, August 14. Select screenings of previous installments in Moss' "river films" trilogy, Riverdogs and The Same River Twice, precede The Bend in the River's one-week-only run.
Filming five friends intimately for nearly 50 years, director Robb Moss invites us to reflect on what it means to inhabit a life fully, in its contradictions and continuities. He 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 adulthood for his follow-up, The Same River Twice (2003). The final installment of a trilogy about Moss’ free-spirited friends navigating their way through life, The Bend in the River weaves new footage of the group–now in their 70s–with images of their younger selves. 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.
The Bend in the River had its world premiere at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival.
On August 12, Film Forum will present two free-admission screenings of Riverdogs, both introduced by Moss. Moss will do a Q&A following an August 13 screening of The Same River Twice, and will appear at the theater for Q&As with The Bend in the River on August 14 and 15.
“Every observation made by these subjects is quietly poetic. The very act of looking back when there’s not much distance left for looking forward is in itself poignant.” – Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
“Moss’s most remarkable work is his trilogy of ‘river films’...Together, the three films are as intimate and thoughtful an evocation of the process of aging as can be found in modern cinema—and in many ways the absolute antithesis of reality television.” – Scott MacDonald, Documentary Magazine
“A gentle, effective documentary that can often feel like looking in a mirror. Personal and revealing without doing much at all. The Bend in the River sneaks up on you. It’s all so modest and slight until it’s something far more poignant. That well-placed juxtaposition of young, free twenty-somethings against stressed-out forty-somethings against resigned, regretful-yet-resilient seventy-somethings hits like a sledgehammer.” – Dan Mecca, The Film Stage
