Lawrence Maleka takes Future Tense to TIFF as actor and executive producer

Lawrence Maleka arrives at TIFF with more than an acting credit

Lawrence Maleka has made his international film-festival debut at the Toronto International Film Festival with Future Tense, the South African-Australian science-fiction drama in which he stars and is an executive producer.

Directed by Jenna Cato Bass, the film screened in TIFF’s Centrepiece programme. Maleka plays Lwando opposite Kristen Raath, with Qondiswa James also in the cast.

The film is set in a near-future Cape Town shaped by climate collapse. Lwando and Tara are given an opportunity to travel back to 1647, before the arrival of Dutch colonial settlement at the Cape. What begins as escape becomes a confrontation with whether history can — or should — be changed.

The genre is doing political work

South African cinema has often approached race, colonialism and inequality through drama or historical reconstruction. Future Tense uses time travel instead, placing those questions inside speculative fiction.

That gives the film an unusual proposition: a recognisably South African political argument packaged as science fiction, with Cape Town’s past and imagined future occupying the same story.

Early festival coverage has focused on that collision of climate anxiety, privilege, race and history. Whether audiences agree with the film’s choices or not, the premise immediately puts it in conversation with a broader international wave of genre films using science fiction to examine social systems.

Maleka’s production role matters

For Maleka, TIFF is also a career marker beyond performance. He has described the project as part of the next phase of his professional life, with producing giving him a role in how stories are developed and carried to international audiences.

That matters in a South African industry where actors often remain separated from ownership and producing power. A local performer arriving at TIFF with both lead-actor and executive-producer credits signals a different kind of leverage.

Future Tense premiered during TIFF’s 51st edition, which ran through 20 September. For Maleka, the festival exposure gives the film an international launchpad. For South African cinema, the more interesting question is whether the attention follows the project beyond the festival circuit and into wider distribution.