The Future Perfect

Winner of Locarno’s prize for best first feature, The Future Perfect follows eighteen-year-old Xiaobin (Zhang Xiaobin) , a recent émigré in Buenos Aires, where she’s rejoined her family after an unspecified time living apart. She’s got a job in a deli, but her Spanish is so poor she can’t understand the customers, and she’s fired. She easily finds supermarket work, which is where she meets Indian immigrant Vijay (Saroj Malik), a customer who asks her on a date. A Chinese immigrant in Argentina shifts from present to future perfect in both language and outlook in this charming, humorous debut.