Uruguayan filmmaker Lucía Garibaldi, winner of the Best Director Award at Sundance for her 2019 debut The Sharks, returns with her highly anticipated second feature, A Bright Future / Un futuro brillante, set to have its world premiere in the Viewpoints section of the 2025 Tribeca Festival, running June 4–14 in New York City.
A boundary-pushing and visually arresting sci-fi drama, A Bright Future unfolds in a bleak, out-of-time South American neighborhood where large-scale fumigations are routine. It’s there that 18-year-old Elisa (newcomer Martina Passeggi in a breakthrough performance) is selected for a prestigious journey to the mysterious "North"—a distant promised land no one has ever returned from, including her older sister.
The most promising young people are sent to this mythical North, "history is being rewritten without mistakes." Elisa, the last young person in her community, is selected to go. Her mother, a devoted believer in the North, works double shifts to win a coveted travel auction. Elisa’s older sister was sent there before, and now their mother dreams of reuniting the three of them.
Yet, the arrival of Leonor, an enigmatic nurse with a prosthetic leg, disrupts the routine: Elisa discovers that her youth is a highly desired commodity, and new developments plant seeds of doubt in her. Refusing to become just another piece of the new order—even if her resistance makes her the most coveted of all—Elisa begins to question whether the North is truly salvation. But soon, she realizes she doesn’t want to leave—and that simply saying so is not enough.
With an outstanding ensemble cast featuring acclaimed actors Soledad Pelayo (The Freshly Cut Grass), Sofía Gala Castiglione (Alanis), and Alfonso Tort (The Freshly Cut Grass), A Bright Future creates a stylized reality not far from our own—where youth is currency, ants are malevolent, and dogs are extinct. Grounded in a deeply personal story, the dystopian yet rebelliously hopeful film explores intergenerational sacrifice and the definitive power of refusal.
With its ironic clarity and emotional force, A Bright Future is a bold leap forward for one of Latin America’s most distinctive filmmakers. Tribeca’s Viewpoints section, dedicated to bold directorial visions and distinctive points of view, offers the perfect stage for Garibaldi’s striking return with her visionary new work.
