Mother Future Self

Preceded by “Crisis Actor”

ERIC SAYS Sometimes major discoveries in film come at you quietly. So it is with Mother Future Self, the debut narrative feature of Tori Lancaster, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Set in an experimental-movement retreat at Maine—a loving recreation of an IRL workshop the director has attended—it embeds us in the exercises and rhythms of the camp until they’re disturbed by an accidental reunion between two attendees: former friends who had a major falling out. The complexities of their reconnection are brought to the screen in all their messy glory via phenomenal performances from leads Imani Jade Powers and Betsey Brown, anchored by impeccable film craft from all departments.

Mother Future Self was filmed on and off for years due to complexities of scheduling and COVID—but you’d never know it. The finished product stands as a paragon of independent film persistence, as it plays as note-perfect and polished as any film in the lineup. Lancaster’s film weaves a subtle spell on the viewer as it builds, recalling the explorations of female friendship, dance and movement, the natural world, and the darkest impulses of the human brain on display in the early work of Josephine Decker—not to mention the wry humor and perfectly rendered collaborative artist spaces of Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up.