Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibilityTheyDream | 2026 Sundance Film Festival
Accessibility

NEXT

TheyDream

sd_star_fav_icon
United States202591 minEnglish
TheyDream

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.

+ More

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.

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).

NEXTAll FeaturesBIPOC StoriesLGBTQ+ StoriesAnimationNonfictionClosed CaptionOpen CaptionU.S. Only- less

Credits

  • Director(s)

    William David Caballero

  • Screenwriter

    William David Caballero

    Erin Ploss-Campoamor

    Elaine Del Valle

  • Producer

    William David Caballero

    Brad Jones

    Erin Ploss-Campoamor

    Elaine del Valle

  • Writer

    Brad Jones

  • Executive Producer

    Carrie Lozano

    Sandie Viquez Pedlow

    Grace Lay

    Ina Fichman

  • Co-Executive Producer

    Megan Gelstein

Meet the Artist

Panelist Name

William David Caballero

  • Instagram

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.

You May Also Like

World Cinema Documentary Competition
sd_banner_img

Silenced

FilmUnFillFavIcon

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)
Episodic
sd_banner_img

The Oligarch and the Art Dealer

FilmUnFillFavIcon

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)
NEXT
sd_banner_img

Ghost in the Machine

FilmUnFillFavIcon

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)
NEXT
sd_banner_img

Aanikoobijigan [ancestor/great-grandparent/great-grandchild]

FilmUnFillFavIcon

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)

FESTIVAL HOST STATE

Sponsor

FESTIVAL HOST STATE

FESTIVAL HOST STATE

FESTIVAL HOST STATE