Project Detail

Kerouac’s Road: The Beat of a Nation

Kerouac’s Road: The Beat of a Nation

Synopsis

Exploring how the legacy of Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel 'On the Road' reflects in today’s America. The film interweaves stories of contemporary “on-the-roaders”, modern travellers and cultural figures including Josh Brolin, W. Kamau Bell and Natalie Merchant, who reveal how Kerouac’s quest for authentic experience resonates powerfully in our screen-saturated era - offering a lyrical meditation on what it means to truly experience the journey.
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2025 - World premiere
Official Selection Locarno Film Festival 2025 - European premiere

Details

Year
2025
Type of project
Features
Running time
91 min
Format
4K
Director
Ebs Burnough
Producer
Eliza Hindmarch, John Battsek, Ebs Burnough
Executive Producer
Helen Parker, Johnny Fewings, Kerstin Emhoff, Ali Brown, Jim Sampas
Editor
Paul Trewartha
Screenwriter
Eliza Hindmarch
Director of Photography
Tim Cragg
Composer
John Forté
Principal cast
With contributions from: W. Kamau Bell, Josh Brolin, Matt Dillon, Natalie Merchant, Ann Charters, David Amram, Jay McInerney, Kim Jones, Jean-Christophe Cloutier, Joyce Johnson, Diana Langley, Tenaj Melendras, Faustino Melendras, Amir Staten, Angel Staten, Karlynne Staten
Narrator
Michael Imperioli

Categories

Production Status

Production Company

UK, US co-production

Universal Pictures Content Group (UK), Ventureland (US)

Universal Pictures Content Group

Central Saint Giles
St Giles High Street
London
WC2H 8AG

Sales Company

Universal Pictures Content Group

Central Saint Giles
St Giles High Street
London
WC2H 8AG

Page updates

This page was last updated on 4th August 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

The Capote Tapes The Capote Tapes

Director: Ebs Burnough

Year: 2019

'Answered Prayers' was meant to be Truman Capote's greatest masterpiece, an epic portrait of NYC's glittering jet-set society. Instead, it sparked his downfall. Through never before heard audio archive and interviews with Capote's friends and enemies, this intimate documentary reveals the rise and fall of America's most iconic gay writer. Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - TIFF Docs - World premiere

Spacewoman Spacewoman

Director: Hannah Berryman

Year: 2024

A landmark feature documentary about astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command the Space Shuttle. Eileen’s incredible journey starts with her smalltown beginnings, sees her smash through many glass ceilings, and culminates in four dramatic space shuttle missions, the last being possibly the most dangerous and most important of them all. At its heart the film is the moving human drama of one family, where a mother’s extraordinary career takes us straight to the big philosophical question of what is the level of acceptable risk in human endeavour? This film celebrates Commander Collins’ trailblazing NASA career which opened the way for women to become spacecraft pilots and commanders, and proved a perfect riposte to a previous generation of male astronauts who thought there was no place for women to lead the way in space. Official Selection DOC NYC 2024 - World premiere Official Selection CPH:DOX 2025 - European premiere

As Time Swallows Time As Time Swallows Time

Director: Rosario Hurtado, Roberto Feo, Stuart Bannocks

Year: 2025

AS TIME SWALLOWS TIME weaves fragmented narratives into a poetic dialogue between two entwined inquiries. The first engages with the curatorial focus of BIO28 (Ljubljana Design Biennale), which interrogates the historical symbolism linking women to flowers - figures of fragility, sensuality, and objectification - and the ways these associations have been reclaimed and subverted. The second unfolds as a speculative exploration of time and temporal perception as forces shaping human consciousness and evolution. Together, these threads compose a meditation on transformation, perception, and the cyclical nature of existence. Constructed through the juxtaposition of narrative fragments, the film layers scenes in a manner that invites viewers to navigate and reassemble its temporal and conceptual terrain. The film presents a dialogue between the Ljubljana Biennale’s curatorial theme, “Do You Speak Flower?” which explores the historical contexts in which women have been symbolically linked to flowers—figures of fragility, sensuality, and objectification—and how those associations have been reclaimed and subverted, and this theme directly, and the authors speculative exploration of time, temporal perception and post humanity.