Entertainment

Robb Moss's River Project Ends With The Bend in the River, Arriving on Netflix December 4

Jonah VillalbaPublished 10m ago2 min readBased on 6 sources
Robb Moss's River Project Ends With The Bend in the River, Arriving on Netflix December 4
Image by KeYang from Pixabay

Netflix will stream The Bend in the River from December 4, bringing the final part of a documentary project that began nearly five decades ago. The film's trailer was published by Deadline on November 5.

The story starts in 1978. Director Robb Moss and a group of free-spirited friends and lovers took a month-long trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Moss filmed it, and the result was Riverdogs, the first film in what he now calls a generational portrait of that group.

He returned to the same friends in 2003 for The Same River Twice, which followed another rafting trip. The Bend in the River completes the series, and it is the last of the three films. Moss, who has taught film at Harvard University for more than 30 years, made it as a documentary with an 82-minute runtime.

The producers are Lisa Remington and Kristin Feeley. Frances McDormand, Joel Coen, Shane Boris and Jeff Reichert are executive producers. Jeff Malmberg edited the film.

Before its Netflix date, the film travelled the festival circuit. It was selected for the True/False Film Fest in February, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in March, and the fourth edition of DC/DOX in May. It won Best Documentary and Best Editing at DOC LA, and it received the Artistic Vision Award at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Moss also received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 Woods Hole Film Festival.

Festivals are where many documentaries first meet buyers and audiences, and this film's run was a busy one. The next scheduled screening is at DOC NYC on November 12. The film also opens at Film Forum in New York City, a cinema known for showing documentaries and independent films.

For anyone who has not seen the first two films, the Netflix release offers a way in. The trilogy is built on a single trip repeated over decades, so the people on screen age from one film to the next. Netflix will be the place most viewers first see the finished set.

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