The Future Perfect
Description
Eighteen-year-old Xiaobin travels from China to Buenos Aires to join her conservative family who immigrated years earlier. Her parents, who refuse even to learn Spanish, want her to fit in with the Chinese immigrant community and marry a nice Chinese boy, but the low-key teenager with a quiet smile has a few surprises up her sleeve. She rebels by secretly taking a Spanish class, hiding her savings, and spending time outside class with one of her fellow students on the sly. As the students in the class improvise simple dialogues to practice what they’ve learned, Xiaobin turns new lessons learned into a new experience in life. Improvising scenarios for what she wishes would happen, or not happen, the future perfect becomes not only a grammatical tense, but a way for her to imagine the life she wants to live. Director Nele Wohlatz recruited most of the cast, including her lead, from actual language-school students, and brilliantly uses their innocence and naïveté to create an atmosphere of spontaneity, realism, and genuine camaraderie. “The language school,” she says, “could be understood as a rehearsal stage for a new identity after immigration.” –Miguel Pendás
Nele Wohlatz is a director and producer whose previous work includes the shorts La mochila perfecta (2014), Ricardo Bär (2013), and Novios del campo (2009). The Future Perfect, her debut feature, had its world premiere at the 69th Locarno Film Festival as part of the Filmmakers of the Present competition and won the Best First Feature prize. Wohlatz is herself an immigrant, having been born and raised in Germany before coming to Argentina. She teaches German in the language school seen in The Future Perfect.
Trailer
//player.vimeo.com/video/207678660?autoplay=1Film Details
Language Spanish, Mandarin
Year 2016
Runtime 65
Country Argentina
Director Nele Wohlatz
Producer Cecilia Salim, Nele Wohlatz
Writer Nele Wohlatz
Editor Ana Godoy
Cinematographer Roman Kasseroller, Agustina San Martín
Music Federico Orio
Cast Zhang Xiaobin , Saroj Kumar Malik, Jiang Mian