At the Woodstock Playhouse on Thursday morning, filmmaker Robb Moss screened his new documentary “The Bend in the River,” the final installment in a trilogy that has quietly traced five friends over nearly fifty years. The film premiered at Telluride last month and made its East Coast debut at the 26th annual Woodstock Film Festival (Oct. 15–19), where the town’s main drag and side streets were crowded with festivalgoers eager to immerse themselves in film.

Executive-produced by Frances McDormand and Joel Coen, “The Bend in the River” continues Moss’s long journey with the same circle of friends he met as teenagers and in their twenties, when they spent months living communally along the Colorado River. That trip became the subject of his 1982 debut “Riverdogs,” followed by 2003’s “The Same River Twice,” a Sundance favorite that revisited the group as they entered middle age.

Together, the three films form an unusually intimate portrait of the passage of time—a nonfiction equivalent to Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood”, but with the rugged texture of the American West. In the new documentary, Moss catches up with the same cast, now in their mid-70s, reflecting on lives well lived. Jim, the group’s wry philosopher, appears reclusive and unburdened by convention; others became doctors, parents, politicians, and dance teachers. What endures is their shared kinship—and the memory of a youth spent together, often naked, along the Colorado.

“It’s not biography,” Moss told the audience during a post-screening Q&A. “It’s people swimming in time.”

Moss, who teaches documentary filmmaking at Harvard University, weaves new footage of Jim, Kathy, Jeff, Barry, and Danny—close friends and the film’s central figures—with archival material and home-video fragments spanning decades. The result is a time-bending mosaic of what it means to live and age: marriages, divorces, loss, work, illness, renewal.

“Filming five friends intimately for nearly fifty years gave me the chance to closely observe the action of time in the lives and bodies of my friends,” Moss said. “While our aging carries “The Bend in the River” forward, it’s the stitching together of the forgotten moments that animates the film.”

The audience, a mix of filmmakers and locals, responded warmly to Moss’s candor and humor—laughing at his stories of naked river-running in wooden dories and the everyday absurdities of aging caught on screen. Moss welcomed it.

“Laughter allows grief, and grief allows laughter,” he said. “They roll together, and they both open you up for the world to come in.”

Among his subjects, Jim offers the film’s most distilled reflection on time. Moss recalled his line about having used up his adrenaline in a life well lived. 

“He was glad to have used it up,” Moss said. “He found language for an experience that’s difficult. He knows who he is, and he still wants to live the life he wants. That’s what I love about him.”

As in the earlier films, “The Bend in the River” is as much about Moss’s relationship to his subjects as it is about them.

“It’s a tremendous burden filming your friends,” he admitted. “The same reason they allow you to film them is the reason you can betray them—because you can show things they don’t want to be shown to the world.”

At 75, Moss spoke of aging with the same curiosity that drives his work.

“At 70 I didn’t feel older,” he said. “At 75, I do. And I know at 85 I will more. Whatever that is between 75 and 85—that’s interesting to me.”

“The Bend in the River” was produced by a decorated team, including Sundance Director, Documentary and Artist Programs, Kristin Feeley , Oscar winners Lisa Remington (The Only Girl in the Orchestra), Shane Boris (Navalny), Geralyn Dreyfous (Born Into Brothels), and Jeff Reichert (American Factory). Together, they helped shape what may be Moss’s most personal film—one that moves like the river it’s named for: steady, unpredictable, and full of light.

As the lights rose and the audience applauded, Moss offered a closing line that summed up both his life’s work and the spirit of the festival.

“I didn’t stop filming,” he said, smiling. “I just kept living with them.”

Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.