No, director William David Caballero can’t literally bring people back to life, but he surely has found a way to bring loved ones back to audio and visual life – and capture their spirit. He does so via a mix of audio recordings, animation, stop motion and motion capture technology for his film TheyDream, which premieres in the Next program at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday.
“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,” highlights the synopsis for the hybrid documentary from Colibri Creative Media on the Sundance website. And it adds that Caballero “brings together decades’ worth of his family’s stories in a profoundly moving and creative work of intergenerational healing through art.”
Starring along with the filmmaker, who served as director, writer, producer and animator on the movie, is his mother, Milly, who cared for her father, mother, and husband as they aged and dealt with various health concerns.
For TheyDream, the son-mother duo used stop motion animation and motion capture technology to transform old home movies and recorded conversations with departed family members into a series of whimsical sequences that the fest describes as “often bittersweet.”
The stories and anecdotes shared may have taken place in the U.S., but as a meditation on love, loss and, above all, family, TheyDream is likely to be universally understood. Erin Ploss-Campoamor and Elaine Del Valle share “screenwriter” credits on the movie, with Brad Jones credited as a “writer.”
Caballero’s animated documentary shorts about his family, which have won him a Webby for best art direction, have screened at the Sundance festival and the Museum of Modern Art. And that even though the filmmaker was once told by a documentary professor that no one would ever want to see a film about his family.
Well, TheyDream is ready for Sundance. And THR can reveal an exclusive clip from the hybrid documentary.
In it, we meet the director and his late father, Guillermo “Chilly,” via audio recordings of their interactions, with parts animated via stop motion capture. Check out the clip from TheyDream to get a glimpse into Caballero family life – and find out how young William made his Dad laugh with his creative choice in a game of Simon Says.
