Last and First Men
All Films
•
1h 11m
Directed by Jóhann Jóhannsson | 72 mins | 2020
Two billion years in the future, humanity finds itself on the verge of extinction. Almost all that remains are lone, surreal monuments—the futuristic, solemn, Brutalist stone slabs erected during the communist era in the former Yugoslav republics, arrestingly photographed in luminous 16mm black-and-white. A stunning feature debut and final cinematic testament from the late composer and musician Jóhann Jóhannsson (Sicario, Arrival, Mandy) conjures a world of surreal and phantasmagorical monuments, once intended as symbols of unity and brotherhood, now abandoned beacons beaming their message into the wilderness. Based on the cult 1930 science fiction novel by British author Olaf Stapledon, with narration by Tilda Swinton, Last and First Men is a poetic, hopeful, and tragic work: an allegory of remembrance, ideals, and the death of Utopia.
Up Next in All Films
-
Last Summer in the Hamptons
Directed by Henry Jaglom | 108 mins | 1995
Percolating existential crises, too-candid conversation, and, naturally, theatrics are in ample store when a family of stage actors and directors and playwrights assemble to bid farewell to their old summer house in this Cherry Orchard-tinted dramedy. As... -
Let the Sunshine In
Leaving February 1
Directed by Claire Denis | 95 mins | 2017
Claire Denis’s voluptuous riff on "A Lover’s Discourse" by Roland Barthes stars a characteristically radiant Juliette Binoche as Isabelle, a divorced artist in search of swoon-inducing, capital-L love. What she finds, via a series of c... -
Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portra...
Leaving February 1
Directed by John Maybury | 91 mins | 1998
Long before Daniel Craig pursued a fraught gay romance in "Queer" (2024), there was "Love is the Devil": in this brutal but scintillating flashback to 1960s London, Craig portrays George Dyer, the petty criminal from the rough-and-tumb...
