In the world that The Future director and scriptwriter Noam Kaplan envisions, there is no terrorism. It’s quashed early, before the terrorist activity can take place, by The Future algorithm. The concept of precognitive abolition of terrorist acts harkens back to the likes of Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi Minority Report, which tackled themes of determinism and free will. The Future tackles themes similarly, in that it tries to propose motherhood as an idea that can’t be predetermined through science, placing The Future somewhere between the 2002 sci-fi epic and the likes of Marjorie Prime. Sadly, these themes are poignant only in proposal, as the scattered monotony of The Future’s delivery robs the film of any intriguing power it might have.
In contemporary Israel, terrorism seemingly doesn’t happen. This is in part because of profiler Dr Nurit Bloch (Reymonde Ansellem), who with help from the Shalom Harman Peace Institute, has created an algorithm that identifies people who plan on carrying out terrorist attacks. The algorithm correlates online posting with past acts of terror to decide who will be the ‘future suicide bomber’, ‘future knifer’ and ‘future soul terrorist’. When a young Palestinian woman Yafa (Samar Qupty) kills the Israeli minister for Space and Tourism, a gaping flaw in Bloch’s algorithm is unearthed. To work out how her algorithm failed, Bloch – of Israeli descent and privilege – must interrogate Yafa, a sneeringly frowned upon Palestinian woman, whose Palestinian tap water apparently tastes like shit.
This review was posted on June 11th 2023. Full review linked below.
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