German Movie Nights: The Future Perfect

The German Film Office is pleased to present a screening of Nele Wohlatz’s award-winning film The Future Perfect (2016), followed by a conversation between the director and filmmaker Matías Piñeiro. Please register to attend. When 17-year-old Xiaobin moves to Buenos Aires from China, she barely speaks the language. Dreaming of a future beyond her family’s grocery store, she begins taking Spanish classes. As her language skills grow, so does the film’s landscape—from the stilted, awkward sentences of a beginning language learner to more complex ideas that incorporate love, identity, and dreams of possible futures outside of the prescribed norm.
“There is gentle comedy here, and a real rooting interest derived from Ms. Zhang’s committed, never-a-false-note performance.” (The New York Times)

“Wohlatz’s assured debut is a playful, exceptionally idea-rich work of fiction with documentary fragments.” (New Directors/New Films 2017)

For The Future Perfect Nele Wohlatz won the Leopard for Best First Feature at the Locarno Film Festival, the ZINEBI First Film Award at the Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films, and the Sichtwechsel Film Award at the Hamburg Film Festival, and.

El Futuro Perfecto
Dir. Nele Wohlatz
Argentina, 2016
65 minutes
With Xiaobin Zhang, Saroj Kumar Malik, Mian Jiang

Nele Wohlatz’s most recent film, Sleep With Your Eyes Open (2024), will be playing at Anthology Film Archives September 5—11.