Lwando (Lawrence Maleka) and Tara (Kristen Raath), a young couple in Cape Town’s grim near-future, take a time-travelling holiday to 1647. But what starts out as a romantic getaway soon becomes a battle for a better future for South Africa in director Jenna Cato Bass’ TIFF-debuting reckoning with genocidal history.

2026
Future Tense
Future Tense
Australian Premiere.
Director
Runtime
96 Minutes
Country
Australia, South Africa
Classification
Unclassified 15+
Falling somewhere between The Terminator (1984) and La Jetée (1962), Good Madam (2021) director Jenna Cato Bass’ riveting, near-future Cape Town-set romantic thriller thrusts a young couple – Lwando (Lawrence Maleka) and Tara (Kristen Raath) – into a fraught speculative fiction. Their world is swiftly dying, but the privileged few can use time-travel technology to holiday in the distant, pre-industrial past. Tara, a teacher, is psyched for them to chill out in their closely monitored holiday home in 1647. But Lwando has other ideas. A proud Black man, he intends to break free and head to Table Bay, where the Dutch crew of the Haarlem will shortly be shipwrecked. Can he prevent them from setting in motion the colonial violence that inexorably leads to apartheid? Which side will Tara choose? That’s the tantalising promise of TIFF hit Future Tense, brim-full of big ideas and similarly visually rich, thanks to fabulous location work shot by cinematographer Jared Paisley.
Toronto
Film Credits
Director
Jenna Cato Bass
Year
2026
Country
Australia & South Africa
Language
Afrikaans, Dutch, English & Xhosa
Subtitles
English
Type
Feature Fiction
Program Strand
Late Night
Producer
Kristina Ceyton, Samantha Jennings & Hisham Samie
Writer
Jenna Cato Bass
Cinematographer
Jared Paisley
Editor
Jacques de Villiers
Cast
Kristen Raath, Lawrence Maleka & Qondiswa James
Film Source
Maslow Entertainment
Genre
BIPOC, Drama, Sci-Fi & Thriller
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