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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.
385 Episodes
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Ep. 385: Patrick Dahl on People’s Park, Remember My Name, Margaret, The Pigeon Tunnel
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. It’s my great pleasure to work on Screen Slate’s annual year-end poll, pulling together people’s ballots and Favorite First Viewings—movies they saw for the first time that year. A favorite Screen Slate critic of mine is Patrick Dahl, who’s not just a regular contributor, he’s the first to write for Screen Slate besides its founder/editor Jon Dieringer. So I was delighted to welcome Patrick to The Last Thing I Saw for the first time to talk about movies from his most recent Favorite First Viewings list at Screen Slate. Among the titles we discuss are People’s Park (J.P. Sniadecki and Libbie Dina Cohn, 2012), Remember My Name (Alan Rudolph, 1978), Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011), and The Pigeon Tunnel (Errol Morris, 2023).
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Ep. 384: Eric Hynes on Chronicles of a Siege, Yo Love Is a Rebellious Bird, Soumsoum the Night of the Stars, Dao, Bucks Harbor, Tristan Forever
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. At the end of this year’s edition of the Berlinale, I talked with curator Eric Hynes of the Jacob Burns Film Center about a few films that screened later in the schedule and therefore might be overlooked. Titles discussed include Chronicles of a Siege, Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird), Soumsoum, the Night of the Stars, Bucks Harbor, Tristan Forever, and my guest’s absolute highlight, Dao (Alain Gomis). As a small programming note, this episode was recorded last month.
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Ep. 383: Oliver Laxe on Sirat
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. In Sirat, director Oliver Laxe tells the story of a father searching for his daughter with his young son’s help. But the milieu isn’t what one might expect: a desert rave scene in an unidentified country in a world plunged into disarray and war. Premiered in Cannes last year and still in U.S. cinemas, Sirat's visceral, spiritual journey joins together the father (Sergi Lopez) with a motley crew of ravers rumbling into the desert and running into a tragedy that tends to catch audiences off guard. I spoke with Laxe recently about the film, which is nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature alongside It Was Just an Accident (directed by Jafar Panahi), The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonca Filho), Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier), and The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania).
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Ep. 382: Berlin 2026 – Bilge Ebiri on Mouse, Moscas (Flies), Everybody Digs Bill Evans
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the 2026 Berlinale concluded its second week, I continued my series covering the film highlights. This time I sat down with Bilge Ebiri of Vulture and New York Magazine, who was making his first visit to this festival. Among the titles discussed were Moscas (aka Flies, directed by Fernando Eimbcke), Mouse (Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson), and Everybody Digs Bill Evans (Grant Gee).
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Ep. 381: Berlin 2026 – Rachel Pronger on The Blood Countess, No Good Men, The Radu Jude Short, The Fabulous Time Machine, The Cruel Woman
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the 2026 Berlinale enters its second week, I continue my series covering the highlights. This time I welcome a new guest to the podcast, Rachel Pronger, critic and co-founder of Invisible Women, an archive activist feminist film collective which champions historic work by women and marginalized gender filmmakers through curation, events, and editorial. We began with a revival selection from the festival’s Teddy 40 anniversary series, Seduction: The Cruel Woman, co-directed by Elfi Mikesch and Monika Treut. Then we discuss premieres from across the festival: The Blood Countess (directed by Ulrike Ottinger, from Berlinale Special Gala), the opening film No Good Men (Shahrbanoo Sadat), The Fabulous Time Machine (Eliza Capai and Daniel Grinspum, from Generation Kplus), Crocodile (The Critics and Pietra Brettkelly) and a new short film from Radu Jude, Plan Contraplan (from Shorts Program 4).
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Ep. 380: Berlin 2026 – Jonathan Romney on My Wife Cries, 17, Safe Exit, Chronicles from the Siege
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the 2026 Berlinale enters its second week, I continue my series of episodes covering the highlights. This time I sit down with Jonathan Romney, who is contributing as usual to Screen and the Observer. Titles discussed include: My Wife Cries (aka Meine Frau Weint, directed by Angela Schanelec), 17 (Kosara Mitic), Safe Exit (Mohammed Hammad), and Chronicles from the Siege (Abdallah Alkhatib).
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Ep. 379: Berlin 2026 – Guy Lodge on Queen at Sea, We Are All Strangers, Nina Roza, Forest High
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the 2026 Berlinale continues, I continue my series of episodes covering the highlights. This time I sit down with Variety critic Guy Lodge. Titles discussed include: the freshly screened Queen at Sea (directed by Lance Hammer, starring Juliette Binoche and Tom Courtenay), We Are All Strangers (Anthony Chen), Nina Roza (Geneviève Dulude-De Celles), and Forest High (Manon Coubia).
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Ep. 378: Berlin 2026 with Jordan Cronk – Rose, Everything Else Is Noise, Dust, Doggerland, Tristan Forever, London
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the 2026 Berlinale continues, I continue my series of episodes covering highlights. This time I sit down with critic and curator Jordan Cronk, founder of Acropolis Cinema in Los Angeles, and we certainly made the most of our time! Titles discussed hail from across the festival’s sections (Competition, Panorama, Forum) and include: Rose (directed by Markus Schleinzer), Dust (Anke Blondé), Everything Else Is Noise (Nicolas Pereda), Doggerland (Kim Ekberg), London (Sebastian Brameshuber), and Tristan Forever (Tobias Nölle and Loran Bonnardot).
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Ep. 377: Berlin 2026 – David Hudson on Rosebush Pruning, Red Hangar, Dao, plus a word for Mouse
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 2026 Berlin international film festival has kicked off, and to kick things off in suitable fashion, I sat down with the one and only David Hudson, who writes the indispensable Daily column for Criterion’s Current. We chatted about the latest edition of the festival and discussed a few films in particular, including Dao (directed by Alain Gomis), Rosebush Pruning (Karim Ainouz), and Red Hangar (Juan Pablo Sallato), while I put in an early word for the very fine Mouse (Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson). Stay tuned for more!
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Ep. 376: Michael Koresky on the 2001 series at MOMI – A.I., Our Song, Mulholland Drive, Burnt Money, Atanarjuat, Fat Girl, Moulin Rouge, and more
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The year 2001 was pivotal in cinema and the world, and Museum of the Moving Image’s series “2001: The Year, Not the Movie” has arrived to showcase the incredible new wok released in that year. I rang up Michael Koresky, senior curator of film at MOMI and Reverse Shot co-chief, to talk about a few selections, many of which were also formative screenings for each of us. Titles discussed include: A.I. (directed by Steven Spielberg), Our Song (Jim McKay), Mulholland Drive (Lynch), Burnt Money (Marcelo Piñeyro), Atanarjuat (Zacharias Kunuk), Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat), Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrmann), Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa), All About Lily Chou-Chou (Shunji Iwai), and In Praise of Love (Godard).
The film series “2001: The Year, Not the Movie” runs February 14 through April 11 at Museum of the Moving Image.
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Ep. 375: Metrograph editors Annabel Brady-Brown, Nick Pinkerton, Kelli Weston on Zelda Wynn Valdes, Paul Morrissey, and The Sound of David Lynch
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. I had fun reading the most recent issue of The Metrograph, the magazine from a cinema I frequent, so for a change from the recent festival dispatches, I sat down with its editors to chat about a few articles that caught my eye. Nick Pinkerton shares his work on the inimitable filmmaker Paul Morrissey; Kelli Weston speaks of fashion designer and costume Zelda Wynn Valdes; and Annabel Brady-Brown talks about Dean Hurley, David Lynch’s sound maven and his unsettling contributions to Twin Peaks: The Return.
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Ep. 374: Sundance 2026 – Eric Hynes on Carousel, One in a Million, Frank and Louis, The Lake, Time and Water
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. To wrap up Sundance 2026, I talked with Eric Hynes, director of film curation and programming at the Jacob Burns Film Center. We talk a bit about movie theaters, as we often do, and then discuss a few final movies from the lineup: Carousel (Rachel Lambert), One in a Million (Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes), Frank and Louis (Petra Volpe), The Lake (Abby Ellis), and Time and Water (Sara Dosa). Then at the end I round up a couple of fiction films that somehow escaped the pod dragnet, including new films from Macon Blair and Gregg Araki, and the absolutely lovely documentary short The Boys and the Bees.
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Ep. 373: Sundance 2026 – Chloe Lizotte on Night Nurse, Homemade Gatorade and other shorts, Public Access Redux, plus A Rotterdam Surprise
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. To look at the remote experience of Sundance 2026, I chatted with Chloe Lizotte, deputy editor of MUBI Notebook, for what ended up being a bit of a mindbending tour through cinema’s possibilities. Among the Sundance films discussed: Night Nurse (directed by Georgia Bernstein), Homemade Gatorade (Carter Amelia Davis), and Public Access (David Shadrack Smith) and Joy Bubbles (Rachel J. Morrison) from another angle. And for a final twist, we couldn’t resist talking about James N. Kienitz Wilkins’s newest feature, The Misconceived, freshly premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
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Ep. 372: Sundance 2026 – Amy Taubin on Shame and Money, Bedford Park, Filipinana, Public Access, If I Go Will They Miss Me, Who Killed Alex Odeh, Silenced
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For the latest dispatch on the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, I reunited with Amy Taubin, with whom I recorded my first episode at the beginning of the festival. We compared notes on Sundance and what we’ve each seen, including several films that won awards. Among the films discussed: Shame and Money (directed by Visar Morina), Bedford Park (Stephanie Ahn), Filipiñana (Rafael Manuel), Public Access (David Shadrack Smith), If I Go Will They Miss Me (Walter Thompson-Hernández), Who Killed Alex Odeh? (Jason Osder and William Lafi Youmans), Silenced (Selina Miles), Nuisance Bear (Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman), and Once Upon a Time in Harlem (William Greaves and David Greaves).
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Ep. 371: Sundance 2026 – Siddhant Adlakha on Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, When a Witness Recants, Undertone, Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, plus Buddy
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For the latest dispatch on the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, I was pleased to connect finally with Siddhant Adlakha, a critic who contributes to several publications including Variety. Among the films discussed were Ha-Chan Shake Your Booty! (directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka), When a Witness Recants (Dawn Porter), Undertone (Ian Tuason),
Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie (Alex Gibney), and Buddy (Casper Kelly).
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Ep. 370: Simón Mesa Soto on his new film A Poet
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. One of the most delightful break-outs in recent cinema is Simón Mesa Soto’s A Poet (Un Poeta), a funny, dynamically shot, and quite touching portrait of a Colombian writer who’s stuck, years after his early success. Actor Ubeimar Rios embodies Oscar with an unstoppable, tragicomic energy that pushes back on turning the poet into an object of self-pity in this multilayered film, as he tries to reconnect with his estranged family and encounters a student poet named Yurlady. I spoke with Simón Mesa Soto about both the comedy he embraces and the sincere feeling he achieves in tapping personal experience, as well as some filmmakers whose art and portrayal of artists have inspired him, and how the great Colombian poet José Asunción Silva figures in the film and its making. A Poet is in theaters now.
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Ep. 369: Sundance 2026 – Abby Sun on Closure, Cookie Queens, To Hold a Mountain, Seized
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The Sundance Film Festival rolled out another promising lineup of documentary in its 2026 edition, and so I rang up Abby Sun, editor-in-chief of Documentary Magazine, to chat about a few of the notable titles she had seen. Titles discussed include Closure (directed by Michal Marczak of All These Sleepless Nights), Cookie Queens (Alysa Nahmias), To Hold a Mountain (Petar Glomazic and Biljana Tutorov), and Seized (Sharon Liese, about the 2023 police raid on the Marion County Record in Kansas).
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Ep. 368: Sundance 2026 – Tim Grierson on The Invite, The Weight, The Friend’s House Is Here, plus All About the Money
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 2026 Sundance Film Festival is in progress, and I sat down in Park City with festival veteran Tim Grierson who is filing reviews for Screen Daily and is also a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times. We spoke about a few highlights of the lineup so far, including The Invite (directed by Olivia Wilde, starring Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz, Ed Norton, and Wilde), The Weight (directed by Padraic McKinley, starring Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe), The Friend’s House Is Here (directed by Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz), and a curious documentary I caught called All About the Money (Sinead O’Shead) about the communism-curious scion of a billionaire family fortune.
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Ep. 367: Sundance 2026 – Sam Adams on Josephine, Wicker, The Moment, Kogonada’s Zi
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 2026 Sundance Film Festival is in progress, and I sat down in Park City with festival veteran Sam Adams, Slate writer and senior editor, to talk about a few highlights of the lineup so far. Among the films discussed are The Moment (directed by Aidan Zamiri, starring Charli xcx), Josephine (Beth de Araujo, starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan), Wicker (Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, starring Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård), and, briefly, Kogonada’s briefly titled new film, zi.
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Ep. 366: Sundance 2026 - Amy Taubin on the festival, plus a preview of John Wilson's The History of Concrete
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The Sundance Film Festival begins its 2026 edition, and to kick off its final, I took a look back with Amy Taubin, a Sundance veteran who has written about the festival’s films and evolution over decades. She shares her thoughts on Sundance, past and present, and we trade notes on titles in this edition whose premieres we have been anticipating, including the historic Once Upon a Time in Harlem. Finally, I talk about one festival highlight premiering on opening night, The History of Concrete, directed by John Wilson (of HBO’s “How to With John Wilson” fame), and Taubin reflects on the history of Sundance’s vaunted Main Street.
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