About William and Santiago Simultaneous
William and Santiago Simultaneous explores a question millions of parents ask themselves: just how alike are my children? The filmmaker and her husband filmed their sons reaching the same milestones during the boys’ first year of life, placing the images side by side on the screen so audiences can see how the boys’ individual journeys mirror each other. Besides providing a meditation on how siblings grow up, the film is a joyful look at what it’s like to make sense of the world for the first time.
Why This Film?
One of the things the film’s director Alexandra Hidalgo has heard over and over from relatives, friends, and strangers ever since having children is that she better enjoy these moments because childhood vanishes swiftly. There is no period that exemplifies this time of constant change better than the first year of life when even a week can make a staggering difference. Not only are babies constantly evolving, but their memory works differently, so that although those first few months have an unparalleled impact on the adults they will grow up to be, they will be unable to recall those formative moments. The impetus for William and Santiago Simultaneous is to capture that time of constant evolution, to ask time to stand still for a few minutes and to show audiences what that famously elusive period looks like. By having two brothers side by side on the screen, the film plays with time even further by having two babyhoods that happened 31 months apart unfold at the same time. The result opens windows into what it’s like to be a baby and what it’s like to love one (or two) of them.
Who Is It for?
As we made William and Santiago Simultaneous, we wanted to reach out to anyone who has ever felt wonder at the ways in which babies develop as they engage with their surroundings and figure out how to become members of the cacophonous and rich space that is family life. Adults and children alike will be able to relate to the story the film tells. Because the film is short and has no words (besides baby talk), it can we watched by people from around the world and reach the audience with its emotive message, no matter what language they speak. The film is also ideal for educational settings from elementary school classrooms to college courses on psychology and early childhood development. Because the film portrays the physical and social milestones most babies reach during their first year of life, William andSantiago Simultaneous provides an enjoyable learning tool for jumpstarting educational discussions with children and adults alike.
