The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer

synopsis

Guillermina and Belinda Statz are nine-year-old cousins who cannot wait to grow up. Childhood imagination marks the beginning of a twenty-five-year collaboration with photographer and filmmaker Alessandra Sanguinetti, who follows their lives from 1999 into adulthood. This intimate longitudinal portrait, reminiscent of a family chronicle, forms part of a multimedia project encompassing the documentary, a series of photography books and exhibitions. It offers a mesmerising meditation on the lives of girls, women and mothers, telling an alternative history of rural Argentina, where patriarchal tradition holds sway.

“It was really organic. I did not want to make a project about two women growing up. I just knew them and wanted to be with them.” — Alessandra Sanguinetti, Variety

biography

Alessandra Sanguinetti (1968) is an American filmmaker, photographer and member of Magnum Photos. She studied anthropology in Buenos Aires and photography in New York. She is known for her long-term documentary photography projects. One of these formed the basis of her debut film, The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer (2026), which won an award at San Sebastián.

film details

director:	Alessandra Sanguinetti
producer:	Julia Solomonoff, Alessandra Sanguinetti
photography:	Alessandra Sanguinetti
editing:	Andrés Tambornino
sound design:	Lena Esquenazi