In his film Chilly & Milly, the US filmmaker William D Caballero offers a sweet and poignant portrait of the loving relationship between his parents. In particular, he pays tribute to the ceaseless, selfless dedication of his mother – long a caregiver to his late father, who lived with diabetes and chronic pain, as well as her own parents. Caballero moves between realism and fantasy, live action and 3D animation, and light and heavy moments, capturing more than a decade in his parents’ lives together, during which his father’s health deteriorated before his death amid the COVID-19 pandemic. At times, Caballero adorns his mother with a cape, paying tribute to her as the kind of hero who so often goes unrecognised, both in media and in everyday life. Through his intimate family portrait, Caballero presents a work that’s unusual and deeply personal, yet likely to resonate with anyone who has an unsung superhero in their own world.