It’s Sunday, and Christmas is just around the corner. A Latin American immigrant in Madrid, separated from her family, checks her regulation status, calls home and, above all, finds ways to cope with her lonely reality.
A day with a lady. Director Rodríguez captures it with a clear, honest and no-nonsense approach. We linger enough to sympathise with her when she pets her dog or looks around for friendly faces in public transportations. Rodríguez flips genders, but it is his own experience as a student leaving Colombia to study cinema in Spain that is transposed in the film. The euphoria, then the homesickness. “A feeling of never being fully present, no matter how good the circumstances”, he says. This is where the intoxicating melancholy in Hasta La Futura comes from.