Film has been known to predict the future. Sci-fi movies like Contagion, Her, and Interstellar have given us a prescient look at issues such as climate change, pandemics, and social life with AI. 

In Argentina, where President Javier Milei’s austerity plan for public education triggered one of the largest demonstrations in recent history on Tuesday, we have Puán, an award-winning comedy and (mis)fortune-telling film that foresaw the consequences of Argentina’s educational budget crisis. It can now be streamed on Amazon Prime across the Americas.

Written and directed by María Alché and Benjamin Naishtat, it follows the candid and profound adventures of Marcelo (played by Marcelo Subiotto), a middle-aged philosophy professor at the University of Buenos Aires’s School of Philosophy and Literature. The faculty, which exists in real life, is commonly known as “Puán,” after the street in the Caballito neighborhood where it’s located. 

After the sudden death of the head of philosophy, the reluctant Marcelo applies for the position, only to find that younger academic star Rafael Sujarchuk (Leonardo Sbaraglia) is back from Europe to compete for the job and shake up the curriculum. Their petty infighting becomes a hilarious narrative drive for a sensitive depiction of middle-class academic life. 

Unlike popular, confident Rafael, the insecure Marcelo seems to stumble everywhere except in class, where he moves like a fish in the water. As their rivalry progresses — together with Marcelo’s mishaps — the political troubles in the constantly under-budgeted public universities will raise the stakes and leave Marcelo at a professional and personal crossroads.  

The last scene of the film, which premiered last year, takes the university’s conflict to a point that seemed dystopian just a few months ago. However, it seemed this week that fiction had predicted reality, as hundreds of thousands of people hit the streets to defend Argentina’s public education system. This just days after footage of the UBA’s Medical School corridors with their lights out to save power illustrated how educational institutions are struggling to afford the most basic utilities. 

A luminous, fulfilling story about stepping out of comfort zones, Puán not only anticipates the conflict, but it’s also good — and kind — enough to present us with a course of action. Marcelo, an intellectual who has always avoided the limelight and moved within the safe space of his philosophy classes, is pushed into the chaotic desert of the real. This is a place where active political engagement to defend one’s community is a path to personal realization — and the only way we can stop abuse from the powers that be.