What does it mean to say goodbye to a creature that doesn’t know you’re leaving?

After falling in love with and marrying a US citizen, the Costa Rican filmmaker María Luisa Santos found herself caught in a long, uncertain wait for a visa to move abroad. Time seemed to stretch as bureaucracy took hold of her daily life. In immigration limbo, she found herself bonding with her brother’s dog, a German Shepherd named Turbo. Santos’s autobiographical short documentary A Film Is a Goodbye That Never Ends lingers on the quiet gestures that characterise her relationship with Turbo – walks, snuggles and relentless companionship – while reflecting on the question: how do you say goodbye to a companion who will never understand what goodbye means? Pairing intimate, beautifully captured glimpses into her life with her tender narration, Santos crafts a meditative work on waiting, parting and the limits of language.