TheyDream Review: All in the Family, Re-Animated

TheyDream
(USA, 91 min.)
Dir. William David Caballero
Prod. William David Caballero, Brad Jones, Erin Ploss-Campoamor, Elaine del Valle
Programme: NEXT (World premiere)

 

William David Caballero remembers how a teacher at film school told him that nobody would want to see a film about his family. A decade later, he finally has a feature film. It’s about his family. Not only that, but it expands upon a body of shorts about, well, his family.

It turns out that people actually want to see movies about Caballeros. Moreover, they want to share and celebrate them, as the film’s selection at Sundance suggests. But maybe Caballero should thank his pessimistic professor. He’s developed a strong understanding of why one family’s stories may appeal to others and found a brilliant way to opening the story upon while remaining true to himself. His dedication to telling family tales, moreover, arguably leads to a deeper connection to, and appreciation of, his parents and grandparents and their sacrifices along the way. TheyDream shares a heartfelt love letter to those who raise us.

The film uses an offbeat style that Caballero develops while moulding his family story over the years. Figurines stand in for his parents, Guillermo (“Chilly”) and Migdalia (“Milly”), and their mobile home in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Caballero shares how Chilly and Milly set up a modest life as a Puerto Rican family who came to North Carolina by way of New York City. The move partly occurs because Milly’s mom, Isolina, lost a granddaughter to violence in New York, and they followed her away from the big city. But heartache always walked beside them.

Caballero unfolds the story of a woman who had a hard life, but an indefatigable spirit, as Milly joins her son as the co-star of the show. TheyDream creates animated scenes from the family’s life as Milly becomes Chilly’s caregiver when his kidneys fail and dialysis occupies their daily routine. It’s not easy living in the presence of so much sickness and sacrifice, yet the film itself testifies to Caballero’s ability to channel that anxiety he experienced growing up into something productive. In creating the film and revisiting these memories, painful moments become touching reminders of selfless acts of love.

TheyDream adds more figures to the mix as Caballero brings his grandmother into the story shortly after Chilly passes. One caregiver role ends and another begins as Milly dutifully devotes herself to providing for her mother towards the end of her life. This commitment includes a much-needed holiday that Milly takes upon her family’s advice and with Isolina’s blessing. But that trip coincides with an inevitable tragedy for which Milly refuses to forgive herself. She still breaks down while discussing the cruise with William. He consoles her best he can, but words only do so much.

Instead, that act of consolation, somewhere along the way, becomes a therapeutic feat of performance. Milly gamely enters her leading lady era via her son’s film. It’s an admirable bit of risk-taking, since Caballero sort of makes the process up as he goes along. The ingenious conceit of the hybrid film involves the production process as part of its design. One observes as Caballero negotiates how best to represent his family’s arc. He makes some moulds and creates nifty dioramas, including one spinning set that playfully conveys movement and the passage of time. But as the camera observes the filmmaking toying around stages of production and tinkering with things on his elaborate at home production suite many miles away from Milly, he learns from his mother’s heartbreak.

The bittersweet nature of Milly’s story is that she never made time for herself while caring for others. William, meanwhile, struggles with the weight of responsibility he feels to care for his mother while also trying to pursue his dreams as a filmmaker. He takes a leap of faith and returns to the mobile home where they chase the dream together. Creating memories both new and old together, William juggles his roles as carer and filmmaker, letting one feed the other while relieving Milly of the loneliness that grips her.

There’s a great sense of catharsis as the pair revisits memories through performance. Thanks to Caballero’s attention to extensively documenting the family history, he was many tools to bring members of the clan who’ve passed back to life. He finds an inspired approach to re-enact conversations as he and Milly take turns lip-syncing to recordings of Chilly, Isolina, and other parties. He then animates their recordings with a likeness of the family member atop them. These returns to the past afford perspective, as Milly sees how her mother was sometimes unfair with her demands on her daughter’s time, while William’s conversations with Chilly reveal parts of his life that he never reconciled before his father passed.

The hybrid approach to TheyDream artfully invites Caballero to explore the multifaceted nature of identity. A tense conversation with his dad shares the closest they came to discussing William’s sexuality after the young man called out his father’s homophobia when he uttered a slur while watching TV. The recording of Chilly’s voice contains audible discomfort. However, William also fails to defend himself when his dad equates being gay or whatever to contracting AIDS and dying. His timidity ties into notions of Latino masculinity. It’s something that William and Milly clearly regret, as they confront the coldness of that relationship. But together, by bringing this story to life through such an unabashedly queer aesthetic moulded through years of sublimated identity, code-switching, and role-playing, closure finds itself through an act of love.

There’s also an especially touching sequence, perhaps the centrepiece of the film, where William and Milly bond by remembering his dog Gustavo, or Gus (like “Goose”). After Milly experiences the deaths of her husband and her mother in short succession, William leaves his beloved dog behind to keep her company. Gus animates TheyDream with a playful spark as his energetic canine innocence inspires both mother and son to see selfless love through fresh eyes. The yappy dog visits William in a dream not long after, and the memory makes everything click as he recognizes what it means to say goodbye.

TheyDream offers less a shared exercise of saying goodbye than one of promising “see you soon.” The acts of remembrance that Caballero captures through these stories may be specific to one family, but the emotional intimacy with which they share them has universal resonance. His old teacher should probably show this lovely film to his class as an example of how to get a family story right.

TheyDream premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

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