


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.

After #MeToo broke the cultural silence on gender violence, international human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson fights against the weaponization of defamation laws to silence survivors.
(1hr 37mins)
Yves Bouvier brokers masterpieces, from da Vinci to Rothko, into the private collection of Dmitry Rybolovlev until Bouvier is accused of a billion-dollar betrayal. Rising ambitions, frayed relationships, and bruised egos fuel a decade-long all-out war between the Swiss art dealer and the elusive Russian oligarch.
(1hr)
The untold origins of artificial intelligence lie not in machines but in power, revealing the fantasies behind the hype that got us here and where we go next.
(1hr 50mins)
The Audience Award: NEXT presented by Adobe
Trapped in museum archives, Ancestors bend time and space to find their way home. History, spirituality, and the law collide as tribal repatriation specialists fight to return and rebury Indigenous human remains, offering a revealing look at the still-pervasive worldviews that justified collecting them in the first place.
(1hr 20mins)
On January 7, 2025, the Eaton fire destroyed over 9,000 structures in Altadena, California. Thousands more were left standing but contaminated with toxic ash. Residents face the impossible decision of whether they should risk their health to return home.
(10min)
A journey to Michoacán’s hypermasculine rodeos descends into the subconscious of memory, queer desire, and longing, leading to a reckoning with the wounds and beauty of a home left behind.
(1hr 10mins)
World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Journalistic Impact Winner
The love story of a London-based Lebanese journalist and a Syrian activist and cameraman as told through 13 years of personal archives across revolutions, war, and exile.
(1hr 25mins)
After his teenage son goes missing, Daniel scours the depths of the Vistula River, torn between the dread of a fatal leap and the hope that his son may still be alive.
(1hr 48mins)
A case that haunted Tennessee’s best detectives for decades is cracked wide open with the help of some unlikely investigators: a high school sociology class.
(1hr 2mins)
A routine school commute turns terrifying when a cable car’s wire snaps, leaving eight passengers — including six schoolboys — dangling 900 feet above a ravine in the remote Himalayan foothills. With 10 hours before the remaining cable is expected to fail, a group of rescuers races to save them.
(1hr 17mins)
As a Nairobi journalist probes a land battle entangling the local government and a powerful multinational corporation, covered wounds are revealed and family secrets are exposed.
(1hr 36mins)
On the shifting edge of the Mississippi River in New Orleans, the spirit of a fading outsider community endures through its two oldest residents.
(16min)
In the remote highlands of Montenegro, a shepherd mother and daughter proudly defend their ancestral mountain from the threat of becoming a NATO military training ground, stirring memories of the violence that shattered their family.
(1hr 45mins)
It’s Girl Scout Cookie season, and four tenacious girls strive to be a top-selling “Cookie Queen,” navigating an $800 million business in which childhood and ambition collide.
(1hr 31mins)
During a summer of grief and fear brought on by immigration raids in Los Angeles, one small act of bravery gives a community hope.
(23min)FESTIVAL HOST STATE


.png)

.png)





.png)

.png)


.png)


.png)
.png)





.png)

.png)





.png)

.png)


.png)


.png)
.png)




FESTIVAL HOST STATE
FESTIVAL HOST STATE

Presenting Sponsors

.png)

.png)
Leadership Sponsors





.png)
Sustaining Sponsors

.png)


.png)


Media Sponsors
.png)
.png)



FESTIVAL HOST STATE

Presenting Sponsors

.png)

.png)
Leadership Sponsors





.png)
Sustaining Sponsors

.png)


.png)


Media Sponsors
.png)
.png)



FESTIVAL HOST STATE
