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Three of Italy’s finest filmmakers take their cameras on the road to craft an honest and humanistic portrait of the country today, as seen through the eyes of its youth.

In February 2020, Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro, MIFF 2018), Pietro Marcello (Lost and Beautiful, MIFF 2016) and Francesco Munzi began travelling across Italy’s many beautiful regions to seek young people’s answers to the question, “How do you imagine your future?” Inevitably, COVID-19 intrudes on the production, but it also prompts some illuminating conversations around the anxieties of the present, alongside the interviewees’ own hopes, joys and fears – a mixture of uncertainty and optimism not just for themselves, but for their country and the world.

This snapshot of contemporary Italy is a gem of collaborative reportage, taking in a range of cultural and socio-economic perspectives in a manner that recalls Pier Paolo Pasolini’s seminal 1964 film Love Meetings. Shot in gorgeous, grainy 16mm, Futura intersperses its modern-day material with archival footage to foreground the complex threads connecting generations present and past. The filmmakers are mostly invisible, yet their curiosity and generosity pervade this eye-opening, necessary documentary: a time capsule of an Italy whose youth, while worried and disillusioned, find great strength in dreaming bravely together.

“None of us knows what the future holds, but a film like this is a reminder of why we should care.” – New York Times