Film review: Futura captures aching uncertainty of generation on the edge of adulthood
Travelling from Venice to Naples, Italian documentary asks a wide cross-section of kids what the future holds
The Cinematheque presents Futura from February 23, 26, and 28, and March 3
THE PANDEMIC was hard on the everyone—from the youngest children who were prevented from socializing in playgrounds to the elderly who were isolated in off-limits seniors homes. But for young adults who were boxed in just as they were ready to break free, start their lives, and pursue their dreams, lockdowns have carried an acute pain all its own.
That becomes heart-wrenchingly clear in Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, and Alice Rohrwacher’s sensitive documentary portrait of Italy’s youth—a film that gives the rare patience and space required to allow young adults to express their innermost fears and desires for the future. In one scene, the open-ended question, “What is the future?” is met with awkward silence, then prolonged giggles, before a group of teen girls starts to really open up. About a third of the way into the film, the pandemic hits—and suddenly common worries about job prospects and friendships become even more magnified.
Shooting in handheld 16mm and drawing on the tradition of old-style cinematic reportage in movies like Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Love Meetings, the filmmakers travel from beauty schools to boxing gyms, and from chef-training centres to farmyards, to talk to students. They journey from picturesque Venetian canals to graffiti-strewn tenements in Naples. And what they find is a universal anxiety about what is to come.
On the one hand, Futura feels deeply, amorphously sad. It’s not just the stress of pandemic shutdowns, but the disillusionment in a generation that holds out little hope of building a future where they grew up—no matter how picturesque the background where they’re interviewed. “There’s no future in Italy,” one states. “Where do you want to go?” a filmmaker prods at one point in another scene. “Anywhere else” is the answer.
But then there are so many glimmers of hope, too. If there’s a through line, it’s the new generation’s tolerance and commitment to inclusion. At one point, beauty school students listen empathetically as one girl talks about how hard it is to be a lesbian in the country; in another, a young man expresses relief that he won’t be forced to marry young like his parents were. Not surprisingly, the teenagers sometimes have trouble expressing exactly what they want; some have a vague idea that money or a good job will be important, while others look confused when a filmmaker asks them if love will be important in their future.
The overriding imagery in the film is of closeups of faces, some kids trying to mask their fear, some working up the courage to say what they really mean. They’re the faces, as the director-narrator Rohrwacher says, of people who are “not children anymore but they’re not adults either”. Theirs is a state of often uncomfortable in-between exacerbated by a worldwide limbo—with no tangible sign yet of what the future will bring.
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