NEXT Special Jury Award for Creative Expression
After 20 years of chronicling his Puerto Rican family, a director and his mother face devastating losses. Through tears and laughter, they craft animations that bring their loved ones back to life, discovering that every act of creation is also an act of letting go.
+ MoreNEXT Special Jury Award for Creative Expression
After 20 years of chronicling his Puerto Rican family, a director and his mother face devastating losses. Through tears and laughter, they craft animations that bring their loved ones back to life, discovering that every act of creation is also an act of letting go.
In TheyDream, director William David Caballero brings together decades’ worth of his family’s stories in a profoundly moving and creative work of intergenerational healing through art. At its center is Milly, Caballero’s mother, who dutifully bore the responsibility of caregiving for her father, mother, and husband as they dealt with aging and various health concerns. Working in close collaboration with Milly, Caballero uses miniatures and motion capture technology to transform old home movies and recorded conversations with departed family members into sometimes whimsical, often bittersweet animated sequences. Demonstrating deep vulnerability and candor, TheyDream and its stories of familial love and loss are both uniquely personal and universally resonant. Caballero was once told by a documentary professor that no one would ever want to see a film about his family. How wrong she was. — BT
Available in person. Also available online for the public (January 29–February 1) and credentialed press and industry (January 28–February 1).
William David Caballero
William David Caballero
Erin Ploss-Campoamor
Elaine Del Valle
William David Caballero
Brad Jones
Erin Ploss-Campoamor
Elaine del Valle
Brad Jones
Carrie Lozano
Sandie Viquez Pedlow
Grace Lay
Ina Fichman
Megan Gelstein
Colibri Creative Media
Willam David Caballero
theydreamfilm@gmail.com
3236300423
William David Caballero is a Los Angeles–based queer Puerto Rican American filmmaker, writer, animator, Guggenheim fellow, and Creative Capital awardee. His animated documentary shorts about his family have screened at the Sundance Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art and won a Webby for Best Art Direction.
