Santiago, an erudite Brazilian butler, has spent his life writing a 60,000-page history of the world's greatest aristocracies-some of them his clients. In an elegant and intimate portrait, João Moreira Salles reflects on his own childhood relationship with Santiago, who was his family's butler, as a way to explore identity and memory. As a film, Santiago nakedly presents how the filmmaking process can be shaped by personal histories. Indeed, Salles' narration explains that this is a new documentary about a past, failed documentary: he started shooting interviews with Santiago in 1992, but could not bring himself to edit the material together. More than a decade later, he returns to his original material-all of it striking black-and-white cinematography-to construct a layered tribute to his now deceased family servant. Santiago himself is a wonderfully studious, stubborn and contemplative man, obsessed with the creative documentation of the world around him. Through precision and mastery of craft, Salles quietly reveals that Santiago is the most challenging, but also ideal, subject for a filmmaker fixated on the same priorities.