
The Last Thing I Saw
Critic Nicolas Rapold talks with guests about the movies they've been watching. From home viewing to the latest from festivals and retrospectives. Named one of the 10 Best Film Podcasts by Sight & Sound magazine. Guests include critics, curators, and filmmakers.
Latest episodes

May 22, 2025 • 34min
Ep. 319: Eric Hynes on Die My Love, The Love That Remains, The Chronology of Water, Imago
Ep. 319: Eric Hynes on Die My Love, The Love That Remains, The Chronology of Water, Imago
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. I’m back at the Cannes Film Festival to talk about the highlights with another all-star cast of guests. This episode we sat down again with intrepid regular Eric Hynes of the Jacob Burns Film Center to catch up with a few richly realized movies: Die My Love (directed by Lynne Ramsay, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, Sissy Spacek), The Love That Remains (Hlynur Palmason), The Chronology of Water (Kristen Stewart), and the documentary Imago (Déni Oumar Pitsaev). After we recorded, Imago won the Jury Prize in its section, Critics’ Week.
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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

May 21, 2025 • 28min
Ep. 318: Mark Asch on The Phoenician Scheme, Drunken Noodles, Lucky Lu, a dab of The Secret Agent
Ep. 318: Mark Asch on The Phoenician Scheme, Drunken Noodles, Lucky Lu, a dab of The Secret Agent
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. I’m back at the Cannes Film Festival to talk about the highlights with another all-star cast of guests. This episode we’ll hear from critic Mark Asch about a few movies from across three different sections: The Phoenician Scheme (directed by Wes Anderson, in competition), Lucky Lu (Lloyd Lee Choi, in Directors’ Fortnight), and Drunken Noodles (Lucio Castro, in ACID). Asch, who has a track record for talking about prize-winning films on The Last Thing I Saw, also slips in some words about The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonca Filho).
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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

May 19, 2025 • 30min
Ep. 317: Jonathan Romney on The Secret Agent, New Wave, Exit 8, Once Upon a Time in Gaza
Ep. 317: Jonathan Romney on The Secret Agent, New Wave, Exit 8, Once Upon a Time in Gaza
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. I’m back at the Cannes Film Festival to talk about the highlights with another all-star cast of guests.
This episode we’ll hear from Jonathan Romney, a critic for Screen Daily and the Observer, about a few movies around the midpoint of the festival. Films discussed include: The Secret Agent (directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho), New Wave (Richard Linklater), Exit 8 (Genki Kawamura), and Once Upon a Time in Gaza (Arab Nasser and Tarzan Nasser).
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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

May 18, 2025 • 31min
Ep. 316: Robert Daniels on Eddington, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Raoul Peck’s Orwell
Ep. 316: Robert Daniels on Eddington, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Raoul Peck’s Orwell
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. I’m back at the Cannes Film Festival to talk about the highlights with another all-star cast of guests. This time I'm very pleased to sit down with Robert Daniels, associate editor at RogerEbert.com and a columnist and reviewer at The New York Times, among other writing. We focus on a few films spanning a wide variety of form and genre: Eddington (Ari Aster), Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning (Christopher McQuarrie), and the documentary Orwell: 2+5=5 (Raoul Peck).
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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

May 17, 2025 • 24min
Ep. 315: Jordan Cronk on Cannes 2025: Sirat, Urchin, Her Will Be Done, Directors’ Fortnight
Ep. 315: Jordan Cronk on Cannes 2025: Sirat, Urchin, Her Will Be Done, Directors’ Fortnight
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. I’m back at the Cannes Film Festival to talk about the highlights with another all-star cast of guests! For this episode I sit down with Jordan Cronk, critic and programmer, who this year is also on the Directors’ Fortnight committee. Films discussed include: Sirat (directed by Oliver Laxe), Urchin (Harris Dickinson), Her Will Be Done (Julia Kowalski), and The President’s Cake (Hasan Hadi). Cronk also previews a few other Directors’ Fortnight titles including Lucky Lu, Kokoho, Dangerous Animals, and Peak Everything.
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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

May 16, 2025 • 29min
Ep. 314: Eric Hynes on Cannes 2025: Two Prosecutors, Case 137, Two Critics Week Highlights
Ep. 314: Eric Hynes on Cannes 2025: Two Prosecutors, Case 137, Two Critics Week Highlights
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 2025 Cannes Film Festival has begun and I’m back to talk about movies with another all-star cast of guests. For this episode I sit down with Eric Hynes of the Jacob Burns Film Center to talk about movies in the early part of the festival, including Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa), Case 137 (Dominik Moll), and two highlights from Critics’ Week, Reedland (Sven Bresser) and Left-Handed Girl (Shih-Ching Tsou).
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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

May 14, 2025 • 25min
Ep. 313: Alison Willmore on Cannes 2025: Sound of Falling, Enzo, and a look at the lineup
Ep. 313: Alison Willmore on Cannes 2025: Sound of Falling, Enzo, and a look at the lineup
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 2025 Cannes Film Festival has begun and I’m back to talk about movies with another all-star cast of guests. To kick off this year’s series, I’m delighted to welcome Alison Willmore of Vulture and New York Magazine for her debut on the podcast, starting with a bang: the first great movie at the festival, Sound of Falling, directed by Mascha Schilinski. We also rattle off a few probable attention-getters in this year’s edition, and discuss another, intriguing early premiere, Enzo, a film by the late Laurent Cantet, directed by Robin Campillo.
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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

May 6, 2025 • 42min
Ep. 312: R. Emmet Sweeney on Tomonari Nishikawa, Minecraft, Long Gone, Crac!, plus Sinners
Ep. 312: R. Emmet Sweeney on Tomonari Nishikawa, Minecraft, Long Gone, Crac!, plus Sinners and The Sniper
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I’m pleased to welcome back a friend of the podcast, R. Emmet Sweeney, who produces physical media for Kino Lorber and writes about movies as well as music. He runs a thriving substack newsletter called Old New, where he recently assembled remembrances of the filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa, who recently passed away. We talked a bit about Nishikawa’s movies, as well as baseball picture Long Gone, Minecraft, the Canadian animated short Crac! (a selection from Light Industry’s recent Children’s Cinema), with a few words from me on Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and The Sniper, an Edward Dmytryk joint featured in the Columbia Pictures series at the Museum of Modern Art.
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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Apr 30, 2025 • 25min
Ep. 311: Radu Jude on his film Kontinental ’25, reflecting the world today, and going back to basics
Ep. 311: Radu Jude on his film Kontinental ’25, reflecting the world today, and going back to basics
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. It’s not every day that I feature the same filmmaker twice in two years on the podcast, but we’ll make a delightful exception for Radu Jude, director of Kontinental ’25. I spoke with Jude about Kontinental '25 at the Berlin Film Festival, where his film won a Silver Bear, and where Jude previously won the Golden Bear for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn. Kontinental ’25 follows a bailiff (an outstanding Eszter Tompa) who faces a personal reckoning after she evicts a man. True to the director of the rambunctious Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, our conversation features his thoughtful reflections on living in the world today, on filmmaking technique, on dinosaur parks, and on what he’s been reading and watching.
Kontinental ’25 will be released theatrically in North America by 1-2 Special.
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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Apr 20, 2025 • 1h 8min
Ep. 310: Amy Taubin on Dying for Sex, The Shrouds, Adolescence, Marina Zurkow, Hoberman Book, Black Bag, Zero Day, Mickey 17, plus Warfare
Ep. 310: Amy Taubin on Dying for Sex, The Shrouds, Adolescence, Marina Zurkow, Hoberman Book, Black Bag, Zero Day, Mickey 17, plus Warfare
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. What better way to begin the glorious spring than a deluxe episode with the one and only Amy Taubin! The legendary critic returns to the podcast to talk about what she’s been watching, seeing, and reading. Among the works discussed: Dying for Sex, Adolescence, Black Bag, The Shrouds, J. Hoberman’s new book Everything Is Now, Marina Zurkow’s Whitney show, shows of John Zorn and Ericka Beckman at the Drawing Center, Zero Day, Mickey 17, and more. I chime in with some thoughts on Warfare and 2,000 Meters to Andriivka and some recent reading.
Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at:
rapold.substack.com
Photo by Steve Snodgrass