The Future is a new feature film by director Noam Kaplan that seems to have a whole lot to say, and it asks the audience to grapple with its topics. It opens with Yaffa (Samar Qupty), a young Arab university student from the occupied West Bank, walking an officer through the process she went through murdering Israel’s Minister of Space and Tourism just before the lead-up to the country’s first mission to the moon. Then, we meet scientist Nurit (Reymond Amsalem), who wants to interview the assassin.
Nurit is the pioneer of The Future Project, an algorithm-based program meant to predict acts of terrorism (or if you’re Palestinian, resistance), and she is convinced that the unrepentant Yaffa is withholding the entirety of her motivation. Much of the film is a battle of wills in a small room, focused on jabs at one another. There is hostility, between the two women, but also an odd level of respect. Their relationship develops over the 31 days before the spaceship is scheduled to land on the moon.
There are a wealth of ideas embedded in this film, and the role of women in the culture appears to be at the forefront. Nurit is unable to carry a baby, and she and her husband are considering a surrogate. The husband is only ever heard, as he is always just off-screen or in a tree. His focus is on hornets, and the eggs they’ve laid. Nurit meets with the surrogate on a few occasions and always seems to be torn about what to do. Is it the responsibility of being a parent, giving up her career to be a mother, the fact that she can’t go through the whole process herself, or a combination of each of these factors? It seems that Kaplan wants the audience to chew on all of these ideas without really stating his opinion.
At one point in the conversation with Yaffa, Nurit remarks that men start the wars, and then give themselves the Nobel Prize for ending them. All of Yaffa’s contacts that Nurit is pointing out as having been implicated in her assassination attempt are men. The events leading up to the assassination even seem to reflect the power dynamic of men with women. However, the main realization that I had while watching was how little I knew about the culture the film is embedded in. I found that lack of knowledge to be what kept me hooked on all the events in The Future.
The Future is playing at Tribeca on June 10.
Rating: Decent Watch.
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