Grandpa Gordon
2023 · 17m · USA
Directed by Ben Knight, Travis Rummel
Genres: adventure, biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, mythic
Guy Eastman retraces his grandfather Gordon's Alaskan hunting expeditions in pursuit of a Dall sheep, measuring himself against a family legend.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a straight-ahead generational reckoning doc that plays exactly the notes you'd expect—guy follows grandpa's footsteps, confronts his own smallness, finds meaning in the hunt. Nothing here subverts the mythology; it genuflects to it.
Knight and Rummel situate Grandpa Gordon in a formal lineage of American expedition cinema and elegiac portraiture, where the Alaskan landscape becomes both archive and mirror; the measured pacing and mythic tone suggest filmmakers who understand how restraint deepens genealogical inquiry.
The decision to let Guy's silhouette move through those vast spaces without scored-up emotional direction—just wind and footfall and distance—is what makes the family legend feel earned rather than inherited.