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Edition 2016
Films
Xiaobin is 17 years old and does not speak a single word of Spanish when she arrives in Argentina. But a few days later, she already has a new name, Beatriz, and a job in a Chinese supermarket. Her family lives in a parallel world, in a launderette, far removed from the Argentinians. Xiaobin secretly saves money and enrols at a language school and tries what she learns in the street. After having learned how to “make appointments”, she arranges to meet a supermarket customer, Vijay. He comes from India, and although they can barely communicate with each other, they start a secret relationship. And when she practises the conditional, the form of possibility, Xiaobin starts thinking about the future.
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Cast:
Xiaobin Zhang, Saroj Kumar Malik, Mian Jiang, Dong Xi Wang, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart -
Original Title:
El Futuro Perfecto -
Country:
Argentina -
Year:
2016 - 65’
Director
Nele Wohlatz
Born in Hannover, Germany, in 1982, Nele Wohlatz studied Set Designing at the HfG Karlsruhe in that country. She directed the short films SCHNEERANDER (2009) and NOVIOS DEL CAMPO (Bafici 2009). RICARDO BAR (Viennale, FID Marseille 2013) was her first feature-length film, followed by THE FUTURE PERFECT (2016), selected to premiere at FF Locarno.
Director's statement
“Actually I think that everyone had to learn a foreign language in a foreign country, once in his/her life. It is often a big issue, sometimes even humiliating. Actually the film is based on my experience from moving to another country (Argentine, ndr) and starting to live in a foreign language. At the very beginning we are put in the strange condition to speak our minds with the vocabulary of a 3-year-old kid. I then realized how learning another language is like rehearsing a theatre play: you need to recreate a new identity, to adapt what you are learning on textbooks for living a new life, just like putting a screenplay on scene. This connection is also the main idea of my movie.”
Nele Wohlatz (director)
Nele Wohlatz (director)
