I've always appreciated a great science-fiction film with political intrigue thrown in. So, when Tribeca announced its 2023 feature film lineup, I made The Future one of my must-see films of the festival.

For those who might not be familiar with the film, the film focuses on two characters, Dr. Nurit Bloch (Reymonde Amsellem) and Yafa (Samar Qupty). Dr. Bloch, a world-renowned profiler that heads up The Future Project the film is named after and is tasked with profiling Yafa after the assassination of the Israeli Minister of Space and Tourism. As these conversations become more personal, the two embark on an examination of female identity and motherhood.

Now that you've got the setup, it should be no surprise that I wanted to see this. Not only does this sound like an excellent setup for a science-fiction film that features political intrigue, but there's also a psychological element, with the themes mentioned above of female identity and motherhood. That checks off all the boxes that make me excited for a movie.

While this is the case usually, execution is essential. These three topics must be distinctive while also gelling with the narrative's tone. In this film, I am sad to report that while director and writer Noam Kaplan is focused on ensuring the psychology, tone, and themes work, he spends so much time on those elements that he forgets about execution.

The examples are plentiful, but the one that stuck out to me the most is that the theme of motherhood is poorly executed and feels like it comes out of nowhere, even though it's one of the main themes.

Speaking further on theming, a softer hand could've been used to portray men in this film. There are moments when a character will be having a conversation, and seemingly out of nowhere, the conversation derails into the fact that men are a problem and doesn't ever attempt to expand on why the character thinks that or give examples that feel relevant to the story Kaplan is telling.

More critically, I was surprised at how irrelevant The Future Project is to the overall story. It's mentioned in passing a handful of times and never brought up again. For something so foundational to the science-fiction element of the film, it's pretty astonishing how little we hear about it.

Furthermore, the entire concept of the movie, Dr. Bloch trying to find out why Yaffa murdered the Minister of Space and Tourism through interviews at her guest house, feels entirely unimportant to the overall narrative compared to the things happening in Dr. Bloch's life.

So, that's a lot of bad things, but there are some good to outstanding elements in the film. Chief among them are Qupty's and Amsellem's performances. The two paired together bring this emotional coldness in the case of Qupty's Yaffa and a meticulous speaker that blankets her emotions by showing the world how smart she is in the case of Amsellem's Dr. Bloch. These two together make The Future worth watching for their scenes alone, as their chemistry evokes a level of comfort neither can feel outside of Dr. Bloch's guest house.

Another remarkable element of the film is the cinematography by Shark De Mayo, who shoots the film handheld at various points to give the place the viewer into the minds of these two different ideologies before widening the perspective quite literally by utilizing the shot-reverse-shot method with some wide shots and some expertly crafted mirror shots that blew my mind.

What upsets me most is at The Future's core is a meaningful story about a political assassination, an intimate portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that's still raging 75 years later, and a world where profiling is an everyday occurrence, but Kaplan's direction seems to have missed the point entirely.

★★

The Future had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Festival and will be released later by Menemsha Films.

Until next time!

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