The Last Thing I Saw

Ep. 309: Jourdain Searles on Lurker, Mad Bills to Pay, Dead Lover, Together, By Design, Desert Fury Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. One of my absolute favorite critics working today is Jourdain Searles, a contributor to several publications (The Film Stage, Hollywood Reporter) and DVD/Blu-ray labels, but I also avidly read her X posts which offer a sharp running critique on films new and old. Searles joins the podcast to discuss a couple of big films screening in New Directors / New Films—Lurker (the Closing Night selection, directed by Alex Russell) and Mad Bills to Pay (Joel Alfonso Vargas)—and some other notable titles from Sundance like Dead Lover (Grace Glowicki), Together (Michael Shanks), and By Design (Amanda Kramer). Plus: the last film she saw at the time of recording: Desert Fury (1947, Lewis Allen). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 308: Karina Longworth on You Must Remember This: The Old Man Is Still Alive – Capra, Ford, Donen, Wyler, and Co. Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This podcast needs no introduction for her erudite, wildly popular considerations of Hollywood film history, and in her latest season of episodes, she looks at the late-career work of major directors through a variety of lenses. I was delighted to welcome Longworth to the latest episode of The Last Thing I Saw to discuss her selection of filmmakers and their often idiosyncratic later works, including Frank Capra, Stanley Donen, John Ford, Otto Preminger, and William Wyler. She also makes a pick or two of contemporary directors we might consider in their twilight today... Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 306: Olivier Assayas on his film Suspended Time, personal filmmaking, and recent favorites Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This weekend, Rendez-Vous with French Cinema presents the latest Olivier Assayas film, Suspended Time—a thoughtful and funny chronicle set in the French countryside during pandemic lockdown. Set in Assayas’s parents’ house, it’s about much more, circling his relationship with his rock critic brother—whom he isolated with, along with their partners—and the feelings of reckoning with mortality and the past that are stirred up. I spoke with Assayas when Suspended Time originally premiered in Berlin about fictionalizing his experience, the introspection of the pandemic, the directors that influenced him, his recent viewing, and where his Irma Vep series fit into all of this. Vincent Macaigne (also in the Irma Vep series) and Micha Lescot co-star as the brothers Assayas. Suspended Time screens March 14 and 16 at Film at Lincoln Center as part of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2025. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 307: Bruce Bennett Returns! Two by Kaneto Shindo, Breezy, Anita Pallenberg, Nightshift, My First Film Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. First, some news: It's a wonderful honor to be presenting a special double screening at the wonderful Light Industry on March 18: An Evening with The Last Thing I Saw! The films that I'll be presenting spring forth from chats on... The Last Thing I Saw. One of these chats is the latest with Bruce Bennett, returns to the podcast to share another treasure chest of movies. We start with two films written by the relentlessly sharp Kaneto Shindo: Devil’s Temple (1969) and The Whale God (1962, aka Killer Whale). What follows ranges from Clint Eastwood’s Breezy (1973) to Zia Anger’s My First Film to a little word on Nightshift (1981) from your host. Kaneto Shindo's work comprises one half of the March 18 double feature at Light Industry: Elegant Beast, written by Kaneto Shindo and directed by Yūzō Kawashima. The other half is Fate, from the rarely screened directorial oeuvre of Fred Kelemen, DP for Béla Tarr (The Turin Horse, The Man from London) among others. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 305: K.J. Relth-Miller on Berlinale Classics: Tenderness of the Wolves, Solo Sunny, Spare Parts, Don’t Cheat, Darling! Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I welcome back K.J. Relth-Miller, director of film programs at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, to hear about her latest travels through new restorations and revivals. As we did last year, we explore this year's Berlinale Classics, a section at the Berlin film festival devoted to restorations and revivals. Our focus is “Wild, Weird, Bloody!”—a series devoted to German genre cinema in all its splendor. We discuss films ranging from horror to musical to crime drama, including: Tenderness of the Wolves (directed by Ulli Lommel), Solo Sunny (Konrad Wolf), Spare Parts (Rainer Erler), Don’t Cheat, Darling! (Joachim Hasler), and Hat Off When You Kiss (Rolf Losansky). Plus: a new Hitchcock restoration, The Paradine Case. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 304: Eric Hynes on True/False 2025: WTO/99, A Body to Live In, Resurrection, Kouté vwa, The Undergrowth Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The True/False Film Festival brings outstanding nonfiction films and filmmakers to Columbia, Missouri, each year, attracting world premieres and also curating from Sundance, IDFA, Berlin, and beyond. I sat down in Columbia with fellow True/False-goer Eric Hynes, senior curator of film at Museum of the Moving Image, to exchange some highlights from our time at the 2025 edition. Films discussed include: Resurrection (directed by Hu Sanshou), A Body to Live In (Angelo Madsen), WTO/99 (Ian Bell), The Undergrowth (Macu Machin), and Kouté vwa (Listen to the Voices) (Maxime Jean-Baptiste). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 303: Justin Chang on Berlin 2025: Blue Moon, Dreams (Sex Love), Girls on Wire Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For my latest dispatch from the Berlin film festival, I sat down with Justin Chang, film critic at The New Yorker (which, as it turns out, makes an appearance in one of the movies!). Films discussed include: the Golden Bear winner Dreams (Sex Love) from director Dag Johan Haugerud, Blue Moon (directed by Richard Linklater and starring Ethan Hawke and Andrew Scott, who won a Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance), and Girls on Fire from director Vivian Qu. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 302: Dan Sullivan on Berlin 2025: The Ice Tower, Little Trouble Girls, Smile at Last, Canone Effimero Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For my latest dispatch from the Berlin film festival, I sat down with Dan Sullivan, a programmer at Film at Lincoln Center (and also, as he points out, a former colleague!). Films discussed include: The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic), Smile at Last (Leida Laius and Arvo Iho), Little Trouble Girls (Urska Djukic), Living the Land (Huo Meng), and Canone Effimero (Gianluca De Serio and Massimiliano De Serio), with a word for Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, having its international premiere in Berlin. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 301: Guy Lodge on Berlin 2025: Kontinental ’25, Living the Land, Eel, Shoah doc All I Had Was Nothingness Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For my latest dispatch from the Berlin film festival, I sat down with Guy Lodge of Variety to talk about another batch of highlights from across the lineup. The titles we discussed include: Kontinental ’25 (directed by Radu Jude), Living the Land (Huo Meng), the stunning debut feature Eel (Chu Chun-teng), and a documentary about Claude Lanzmann’s making of Shoah, All I Had Was Nothingness (Guillaume Ribot). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 300: Julia Loktev on My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Last October I interviewed the filmmaker Julia Loktev during the New York Film Festival about her latest work, My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow. This week her film has its international premiere at the Berlinale. It’s about independent journalists in Russia before and after the start of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When I spoke to Loktev last fall, I asked about how skillfully the five-hour-plus movie is put together, and she in turn explained how the situation in Russia grew even worse with the invasion. Since then, Trump’s election in the United States and his radical re-shaping of the government have created an additional context for the film, in which Loktev’s descriptions of Russia’s strategies of suppression and deception start to sound even more like a frightening warning. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass