The 2026 Camden International Film Festival in mid-coast Maine has reached its midway point.

The prestigious all-documentary festival continues Saturday with the world premieres of Sierra Pettengill’s Argonauts at the End of History and Nicole Costa’s No Money No Honey. Friday saw the world premieres of two other nonfiction features: Dependence, directed by Grace Harper Brighouse, and Windows of Time, directed by Hubert Taylor and Cyrus Moussavi.

The 22nd edition of the festival is once again attracting many of documentary’s most acclaimed filmmakers, including Oscar winner Alex Gibney, with his new film Musk; Oscar winner Laura Poitras with her short film They’re Here, co-directed by Rachel Lauren Mueller; two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple with Union Town, and Oscar-shortlisted director Luke Lorentzen with Boatbuilders, about the meticulous crafting of a gorgeous 56-foot wooden sailboat at the Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine (the magnificent vessel was spotted Friday in Camden harbor).

The Gibney, Poitras, Kopple, and Lorentzen films all headed to Camden from their world premieres at the Venice Film Festival just a few days ago. Screening on Thursday night was a film that bowed in August at the Locarno Film Festival: The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer (La ilusión de un verano sin fin) by the Argentinian photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti, making her directorial debut.

The documentary invites viewers into the world of two captivating girls, cousins Guillermina “Guile” Aranciaga and Belinda “Beli” Stutz, growing up in a farming area of the Argentinian Pampas. Beginning in 1999, Sanguinetti followed the girls’ lives as they tended to the animals on the farm, frolicked in nearby waters, and engaged in flights of fancy and imagination – often playing dress up, sometimes with Beli in the role of a dashing young man, mascara applied to her upper lip to pass for a mustache.

At a Q&A following the screening moderated by CIFF Senior Programmer Zaina Bseiso, Sanguinetti explained that her original intention was to make a series of photographs about farm animals, “Seeing life through their eyes. And that’s where I met the girls’ grandmother that appeared in the film, and through the grandmother is how I met them.” Later, Sanguinetti shifted her focus to taking still images of Guile and Beli.

“When I was photographing them, I felt like it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t hear them… I thought, ‘Photography’s just too flat. I have to film this,’” Sanguinetti explained. “I would put the video camera on the tripod and photograph them at the same time. And then I realized they were acting for the video camera. So, then I started playing with them saying, ‘Oh, why don’t we pretend this? Why don’t we pretend that?’ And it was just play between the three of us.”

The filmmaker continued, “I could tell they started feeling sort of like the stars of their own life with the video. When I was photographing them, I felt more like a little dictator. I was more precious with the light and the framing and all of that. And with the video it just felt free. With video, I feel like I’m living with the people… With photography… I feel like I’m watching from the outside. The video just made me feel that I was part of it all.”

Remarkably, The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer follows Guile and Beli over a quarter of a century as they move from girlhood into young adulthood and adulthood. As is common with many documentary projects, the narrative took shape in the edit bay.

“I wasn’t sure what it was until I started editing. I had a certainty that it was them, it was the animals as witnesses, time, time, time, the grandmother,” Sanguinetti said. “But then with the editing, you just start seeing the threads, the patterns in the lives that you can’t see in the moment. Like Guillermina, that’s the most literal one. She’s been talking about being a spinster, being alone, since she’s nine. And a lot of things, like self-prophesizing things I discovered through the editing.”

Audiences in Locarno and now in Camden have seen the final version of the documentary. But the protagonists haven’t.

“Guillermina has seen versions of the film. She hasn’t seen it finished. And Belinda, I kept offering to show her as I was making different versions of it and she was like, ‘No, I don’t want to see it. I want to see it when it’s out,’” the director shared. “They know the material I have. They know I have infinite material of them. Belinda knows that she’s breastfeeding [her child]. So that’s not going to be a shock. What might be a shock for her is the arc because I created that. It’s faithful, but it’s missing 80-percent of their lives. This is just the story of them through my eyes, this little bit of their life.”

The Illusion of an Endless Summer next plays at the San Sebastián Film Festival in Spain and will screen in October at Film Fest Gent in Belgium, the Chicago International Film Festival, and Mill Valley in Northern California.

The Camden International Film Festival continues through Sunday in the towns of Camden and Rockland. Prizes will be presented in two juried categories — the Harrell Award and the Cinematic Vision Award. The Fowlie Award, named for festival founder Ben Fowlie, will go to the audience choice for favorite feature-length documentary, and comes with a $10,000 prize.

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