Jenna Cato Bass‘s latest film, Future Tense, reflects an eerie timeliness within our era of climate change repercussions. World premiering just weeks after the catastrophic glacial flash floods in Nepal, the near future in Bass’s sci-fi feature feels closer than we can imagine. Grounding the bigger-picture themes of climate change, the romanticization of the past, and discussions of colonialism‘s long-term impact on not just cultures but the climate as a whole is a couple whose own future is as uncertain as the world’s.
Ahead of the world premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, we spoke with writer/director Jenna Cato Bass, where we discussed the initial starting point for the story we see unfold in Future Tense, crafting a different look for the past than what audiences have come to expect to see in time travel stories, and how her collaborative process with the cast changed this time compared to her previous projects.
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The story emerged from several places, coming together to form the foundation from which Bass began sculpting and shaping what audiences experience in Future Tense. “[I was] really deeply troubled and distraught about the climate crisis, and wanting to make a film about it, and not even knowing where to start because where does one [start],” she explained. “And then having this idea, which was linked to that, which was, what if [it takes place] in the future?”
Future Tense emerged from anxieties about climate change and a love of time travel.
Her love of time travel films prompted the development of the fantasmical elements that would elevate Future Tense into the sci-fi realm: “Time travel exists, but instead of being used for all the heroic ends that often is used in films, it’s used for exclusive luxury travel because we’ve messed up the planet and there’s nowhere to go on beautiful off-grid holidays, and so people go on holiday to the past.” The thing is that with that idea, Bass wasn’t entirely sure who the story would be about, or rather, how to address the ‘so, what?’ of it all.
Ultimately, Bass found what would tie everything together in her personal life and the questions she was working through: “It took me a while to figure out that I was processing a lot to do with the relationship that I’d been in,” she shared. This led her to focus the film’s story on a couple, with Bass drawing on her experiences and observations of others in her personal life to flesh out the rest.
“The characters were very much [based on] some people that I knew very well and could actually see in that situation,” she explained. “I [also] realized a lot of the political discussions were also very personal at the same time because it’s one thing to talk about what we must do about the world and the planet, but then also, like, how do those decisions and the decisions about what actions that we take or don’t take affect our everyday lives.”
In approaching the setting of Future Tense, and more specifically, the time, Bass was incredibly intentional about what she hoped to do differently: “I knew very early on that I wasn’t really interested in setting it in this distant future where time travel existed, but where there was this world very far removed from the world that we’re in now. I really wanted it to be in a world that’s kind of like tomorrow. It might not be today, but it’s just around the corner.”
This decision would shape the visual impact of how the story was told, moving away from expected interpretations of a future world in crisis (think red skies, toxic air) and toward something that felt rooted in the now. The intentional use of present-day disaster footage, like images from Los Angeles fires, and footage from the past further rooted the crisis and fleshed out the film’s world, one that would be incredibly familiar to those of us who have lived in places most vulnerable to climate-change-induced disasters.
“It was just so ironic, setting up this future world where all these things are going on and using footage, which is not even from now; it’s from the past. These are things that have happened,” she shared, before mentioning why she added footage from the past to illustrate what was going on in the world of the film. “Putting in that [footage in the background] was in part a response to feedback that we had that we needed to be clearer that the world is in a crisis.”
Budget played a huge factor in determining where the film would be set.
When tackling the locations featured in Future Tense and figuring out the best logistical approach to telling a time travel story, budget was a factor for Jenna Cato Bass. “It’s very difficult to make films, and so I’m always thinking, how can I tell a story with very little. I wish I didn’t have to always think like that, but it’s also a great creative prompt.” Ultimately, the answer came from a game she played as a child while in nature: “If I were in a space where I was isolated, I would just look around and pretend I’d traveled back in time.”
“I realized you could tell a story that was set in the past without necessarily having all those things that we associate with bigger time travel plots, with all these other production complications, so it was definitely intentional,” she shared. Once it came time to shoot the film on location, reality proved more complicated, despite the scaled-back approach to her vision.
“It was actually a lot of traveling around,” Bass explained, describing how they were shooting across both sides of the province for the shoot. “There were also a lot of difficulties shooting in the wilderness, and trying to still be safe, and trying to have the least environmental impact, and so it was actually kind of complicated in the end, even though it was meant to be simple.” The simplicity pays off in depicting a (mostly) untouched wilderness from modern hands, crafting an ideal space where the wealthy of Future Tense would want to travel back to.
Because of scheduling and other factors before shooting, Jenna Cato Bass admitted that for Future Tense, she didn’t have much time to prep actors Lawrence Maleka and Kristen Raath. Her usual process involves a lot of prep work before getting to set so that her actors know their characters really well, with the open invitation on set that, if more information was needed, they could come together. Unfortunately, that window for early prep was just not available.
“Kristen and Lawrence identified with aspects of these characters in a really strong way, and I’m speaking for them now, but [what] guided them is that they, even if they were very different in some ways from them, they understood the context that both of these characters were coming from very well, and they also put a lot of themselves into them and related to aspects of these characters,” Bass explained, emphasizing the trust she had in both performers in getting the job done.
“There comes a point where I stop intervening, and I’m just like, these are the characters now. You’re co-creating it moment by moment with these people who are putting themselves on screen to be the character, and so yeah, this was a different process for me. It was, I guess, more traditional. It was still also very rewarding.”
Ultimately, Jenna Cato Bass hopes Future Tense makes people feel less alone.
When it comes to what Bass hopes people take away from Future Tense, it’s that we’re not alone in confronting and processing this behemoth that is climate change: “I want people to feel like they are not alone in their anxiety and their fear and their anger. That there are other people experiencing this too, and I think it’s normal in an abnormal situation.
I hope that it shows that no matter how big the crisis is, and no matter how small the individual, those two things are connected, and that is both a weakness and a strength that we have, and we can kind of choose which way we look at it.”
As climate change becomes impossible to ignore, it can feel overwhelming, especially when you try to imagine what the future holds. The film may not have easy answers for its central characters, but in its final moments, the importance of community looms large. None of us faces these changes alone, but as Bass’s film shows, together we can get through these crises and find understanding that we’re all in this together, even when doubts loom large. It’s a message we need to hear more than ever, and Jenna Cato Bass’s Future Tense does just that.
Future Tense had its world premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.
