The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer

In Progress

Filmed over twenty-five years, The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer traces the lives of two inseparable cousins, Guillermina and Belinda, as they grow up in the vast Argentine Pampas. The film begins in 1999, when photographer-filmmaker Alessandra Sanguinetti invites her nine-year-old neighbors to share their dreams and fantasies, sparking a magical, deeply collaborative process that spans two decades. As Guillermina and Belinda leave childhood behind, their games take on the poignant weight of real-world desires and the realities of a male-centered rural life. The result is a portrait of female intimacy and friendship at once quiet and poetic, in which the fantastic and the mundane are intimately entwined. With the passage of time as its most palpable tension, the film becomes a bittersweet record of what changes and what remains in the inevitable arrival of adulthood.

The Filmmakers

Alessandra Sanguinetti (b. 1968) is an Argentine-American photographer known for her collaborative, long-term storytelling projects that explore memory, place, and the passage of time.

She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hasselblad Foundation Grant, the Discovery Award at Rencontres d’Arles, and a Robert Gardner Fellowship from the Harvard Peabody Museum. Her photographs are held in public collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She divides her time between California and Buenos Aires.

Sanguinetti has published six monographs: Some Say Ice (MACK, 2022); On the Sixth Day (Nazraeli Press, 2005; MACK, 2022); The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams (Nazraeli Press, 2010; MACK, 2019); The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer (MACK, 2021); Le Gendarme sur la Colline (Hermès/Aperture Foundation, 2018); and Sorry, Welcome (TBW Books, 2013).

Julia Solomonoff is an Argentine director and producer based in New York whose work bridges international arthouse cinema and character-driven American indie. Her features as writer/director include Sisters (TIFF and San Sebastian), co-produced by Walter Salles; The Last Summer of La Boyita, co-produced by Pedro Almodóvar and winner of over twenty international awards including the ACID/Prix de la Jeunesse at Cannes; and Nobody’s Watching, which won Best Actor at the Tribeca, opened at Film Forum, and was named a Critics’ Pick by The New York Times and The Village Voice. For TV she directed the documentary series Parana, biography of a river and Aerocene Pacha, the mockumentary Chinchonfan, the limited series 15 por hora for Paramount+ and the featurette The Suitor (PBS)

Solomonoff has also been actively producing emerging talent from Latin America for the last two decades. Starting with Alejandro Landes’ Sundance Documentary selection “Cocalero”, three Argentine/Brazilian/French coproductions “Found Memories” (Venice, Toronto, San Sebastián), “Pendular” (Berlin), and “A memoria que me contan” (FIPRESCI Award, Moscow). She participated in “Everybody Has a Plan” (starring Viggo Mortensen), “The Third Bank of the River” (Berlin FF, Executive Producer Martin Scorsese), and the acclaimed “Zama” by Lucrecia Martel (Venice, Toronto, NYFF).

She recently completed Alessandra Sanguinetti’s debut feature documentary “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer”, selected for the Sundance Edit Lab and Producers Summit 2022, produced with the invaluable support of Impact Partners and MUBI.

She was Chair of NYU Tisch Grad Film and acts now as Head of Directing.