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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.
361 Episodes
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Ep. 361: Amy Taubin on Richard Linklater’s Fall Doubleheader, It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent, Mr. Scorsese, Cover-Up, BLKNWS, Kontinental ’25
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the week of Thanksgiving begins, I give thanks for... Amy Taubin! She returns to The Last Thing I Saw to discuss some new releases, including key titles that have been making their way into theaters after screening in The New York Film Festival and elsewhere. Titles addressed by Taubin include: Richard Linklater’s double triumph of Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon; It Was Just an Accident, from Jafar Panahi; The Secret Agent, from Kleber Mendonça Filho; Rebecca Miller’s streaming series Mr. Scorsese; Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNEWS: Terms & Conditions; Kontinental ’25 from Radu Jude; the Seymour Hersh documentary Cover-Up, from Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus; and memories from the NYFF secret screening of Marty Supreme.
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Photo by Steve Snodgrass
Ep. 360: Abby Sun on IDFA 2025: A Fox Under the Pink Moon, December, Silent Flood, The Kartli Kingdom, Air Horse One
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. In November I make my annual visit to the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), and for the 2025 edition, I sat down again with Abby Sun, editor of Documentary Magazine. Among the movies we talked about were A Fox Under a Pink Moon (directed by Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya), December (Lucas Gallo), Silent Flood (Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk), The Kartli Kingdom (Tamar Kalandadze and Julien Pebrel), and the short Air Horse One (Lasse Linder).
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Ep. 359: Ira Sachs on Peter Hujar’s Day
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I spoke with filmmaker Ira Sachs about his latest movie, Peter Hujar’s Day. It’s a fascinating chronicle of a 1974 conversation between New York photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz, whose asks Hujar to recount a day in his life in great detail, including visits by friends, an encounter with Allen Ginsberg (whom The New York Times assigned him to photograph for a portrait), Chinese food orders, and much else. Based on actual transcripts, it’s a beautiful demonstration of craft—the actors’, and the photographer and writer they play. Sachs talked about making the film with Whishaw and Hall, the apartment they shot in, the directors whose work inspired him, and the new movie he has been shooting.
Peter Hujar’s Day is in theaters now.
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Ep. 358: Michael Leader of Ghibliotheque on The Animation Atlas
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Michael Leader co-hosts The Ghibliotheque Podcast with Jake Cunningham, and we originally connected when my book The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki was published. And so I was delighted to learn of The Animation Atlas, the lovely new book he and Cunningham wrote, which was published this fall. The Animation Atlas spans six continents in exploring the animation traditions of different countries through selected films, and of course I was eager to pepper Leader with questions. Leader, who is also curator of archive platforms at the British Film Institute, discusses films including Yellow Fever (directed by Ng'endo Mukii), the stop-motion work of Ladislas Starevich, KPop Demon Hunters (Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans), Bubble Bath (György Kovásznai), Ne Zha 2 (Yu Yang), Boy and the World (Ale Abreu), Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle (Haruo Sotozaki), and Time Masters (René Laloux). He also shares a few general thoughts on the global animation landscape today.
The Animation Atlas: The Ghibliotheque Guide to the World of Animated Film by Jake Cunningham and Michael Leader is available for purchase now.
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Ep. 357: Radu Jude on his new film Dracula, plus One Battle After Another, shooting his next film, and more
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Radu Jude’s latest film, Dracula, is a fervidly imaginative, joyously profane look at this enduring myth through multiple stories, riffing on past tellings, a dinner theater, Francis Ford Coppola’s film, a sweatshop run by vampires, assorted AI grotesquerie, and more. As a fan of Radu Jude’s work, I couldn’t resist another conversation with the multiple-award-winning Romanian director of Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. He also dug into the history of the Dracula story in Romania and shared his recent viewing and reading, including thoughts on One Battle After Another.
Dracula opens in theaters on October 29.
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Ep. 356: Alissa Wilkinson on The Perfect Neighbor, Is This Thing On, A House of Dynamite, Diane Keaton, Frankenstein, Sphere
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the fall season gets underway and movies make their way to screens and streaming, I was happy to talk with Alissa Wilkinson, a movie critic at The New York Times and author of We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. Among the titles we discussed were The Perfect Neighbor (directed by Geeta Gandbhir), Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper), A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow), and—in memory of Diane Keaton’s recent passing—Reds (Warren Beatty). We also think about the prominence of movies playing off mothers and fathers in extreme circumstances, such as Hamnet, Die My Love, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and the postpartum-inflected Frankenstein. Plus, I ask about Wilkinson’s trip to Sphere—just Sphere—in Las Vegas.
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Ep. 355: Jafar Panahi on It Was Just an Accident
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This year during the New York Film Festival, I was extremely fortunate to speak with Jafar Panahi, director of It Was Just an Accident. The story concerns a prison survivor who runs into the man he believes to be his former tormenter, leading him to take action and reconnect with others. Panahi’s outstanding film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, after years of government bans of one kind or another on his filmmaking and freedoms. Through a translator I spoke with Panahi about It Was Just an Accident and especially the enduring philosophical issues raised by its characters living under a repressive regime.
It Was Just an Accident opens in theaters on October 15.
My thanks to the translator for making the conversation possible. (Please note that because of recording circumstances, the audio of my questions is only in English.)
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Ep. 354: Robert Daniels on Good News, Anemone, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, The Love That Remains
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. In the last week of the 2025 New York Film Festival I was pleased to catch up with Chicago-based critic Robert Daniels, who is associate editor at RogerEbert.Com and a regular contributor at The New York Times. We talked about a few movies he had seen while attending NYFF, as well as an outstanding title from the Toronto film festival that’s coming up this week on Netflix. Films we discussed included Anemone (directed by Ronan Day-Lewis), Good News (Byun Sung-Hyun), Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (Scott Cooper), and The Love That Remains (Hlynur Palmason).
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Ep. 353: Sergei Loznitsa on his latest film Two Prosecutors
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. At the 2025 New York Film Festival I spoke with Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa, whose fiction and documentary work comprise an ongoing examination of history, war, memory, and resistance. His latest film, Two Prosecutors, is set in 1937 and based on a novella by Soviet scientist and political prisoner Georgy Demidov. In the almost parable-like story, a young prosecutor, Kolev, sets out to investigate the status of a prisoner in a gulag who has managed to get a note to the outside world, but Kolev's reasoned attempts run into the full force of the Stalinist regime. Just before the New York Film Festival premiere of Two Prosecutors, I spoke with Loznitsa about the contemporary resonance of the story, his choices in shooting and locations, the incredible resilience required to survive under these circumstances, two films that he recommends around this subject matter, and what conclusions about paths forward can be drawn from this history.
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Ep. 352: Kleber Mendonça Filho on The Secret Agent
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. At the 2025 New York Film Festival I was fortunate enough to speak with Kleber Mendonça Filho, director of The Secret Agent. Set during the military dictatorship in 1977 Brazil, his riveting film follows a man who must go into hiding under a new identity after running afoul of a corrupt businessman. Utterly unpredictable and mingling the rhythms of daily life and survival, as well as the machinations of violent enforcers, it was a movie I was eager to talk to the director about, written as it was under the regime of Jair Bolsonaro (later rejected and convicted). We discuss the portrayal of the protagonist (played by Wagner Moura), the role of memories in capturing the time period, how geography figures into Brazil’s history, the film’s fascinating den-mother character (Tania Maria), and a range of his viewing—from last week to pandemic viewing under Bolsonaro to teenage years.
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Ep. 351: Pre-Code Parade with Cristina Cacioppo and Caroline Golum: Supernatural, Night Nurse, Million Dollar Legs, and more
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For the latest episode I’m delighted to be joined by programmer Cristina Cacioppo and writer-director Caroline Golum for a celebration of pre-code films in all their anarchic, outré splendor. Cristina Cacioppo is director of programming at Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Cinema where she and Caroline present Pre-Code Parade, a regular series of pre-code movies (shown on film!). We discuss titles that will show or have already shown at Nitehawk, including: the upcoming Supernatural, a psychic medium thriller starring Carole Lombard; the W.C. Fields fake-country Duck Soup-esque comedy Million Dollar Legs; and Night Nurse, the Prohibition-era working-girl classic starring Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Blondell, and Clark Gable as a sinister chauffeur.
Supernatural screens October 7 at Nitehawk Cinema at Prospect Park. Caroline Golum's new feature, Revelations of Divine Love, premiered at FIDMarseille.
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Ep. 350: Tim Grierson on One Battle After Another, Hamnet, Wake Up Dead Man: Knives Out 3, The Lost Bus, Hedda
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As we look ahead to the fall with movies from Venice and Toronto set for release, I was very happy to talk about some Big Fall Films with Tim Grierson, Senior U.S. Critic for Screen Daily and a battle-tested veteran of the key festivals. But of course there was also another title that stood apart from festivals this year that we couldn’t miss to talk about either: the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie. So the titles we discussed include One Battle After Another (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, opening September 26), Hamnet (Chloe Zhao, November 27), Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (Rian Johnson, November 26), Hedda (Nia DaCosta, October 22), and The Lost Bus (Paul Greengrass, out now).
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Ep. 349: Toronto 2025: Edo Choi on The Christophers, Wavelengths, The Currents, Two Pianos, Nouvelle Vague, plus Tuner
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 50th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival had far too many movies for a single episode, and so I’m happy to talk through more titles with Edo Choi, film programmer at Metrograph. Among the films discussed are The Christophers (directed by Steven Soderbergh), Two Pianos (Arnaud Desplechin), The Currents (Milagros Mumenthaler), Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater), Tuner (Daniel Roher), and a few highlights from the Wavelengths section: Morgenkreis (Basma al-Sharif), CONFERENCE (Björn Kämmerer), Rojo Zalia Blau (Viktoria Schmid), and FELT (Blake Williams).
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Ep. 348: Mark Asch on Toronto 2025: Christy, Maddie’s Secret, Claire Denis’s The Fence, Sacrifice
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The Toronto International Film Festival began its 50th edition, and for this jubilee year, I kicked things off with critic Mark Asch, a past TIFF correspondent on the podcast who is writing for The Art Newspaper and Little White Lies. Among the TIFF premieres discussed are Christy (directed by David Michod and starring Sydney Sweeney), The Fence (directed by Claire Denis), Maddie’s Secret (directed by and starring John Early), and Sacrifice (a Romain Gavras joint). Stay tuned for more on TIFF’s sprawling slate!
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Ep. 347: Venice 2025 – Jessica Kiang on Silent Friend, Duse, Cover-Up, Girl, The Holy Boy, plus In the Hand of Dante
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For a grand finale to my episodes from the 2025 Venice Film Festival, I sat down with critic Jessica Kiang, who is writing reviews from Venice for Variety. Among the films discussed are Silent Friend (directed by Ildiko Enyedi), Cover-Up (Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus), Duse (Pietro Marcello), Girl (Shu Qi), No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook), and The Holy Boy (Paolo Strippoli), with my few additional sleep-deprived words on In the Hand of Dante (Julian Schnabel). Please note: this was recorded before the end of the festival.
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Ep. 346: Venice 2025 - Jonathan Romney on L’Etranger, The Voice of Hind Rajab, Remake, A House of Dynamite
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I have been busily watching movies at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, and for my latest episode, I sit down with critic Jonathan Romney, who is writing about the festival for Screen Daily and the Observer. Among the films discussed are The Voice of Hind Rajab (directed by Kaouther Ben Hania), Remake (Ross McElwee), and L’Etranger (Francois Ozon), with further thoughts on A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow) and Dead Man’s Wire (Gus Van Sant).
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Ep. 345: Venice 2025: Chloe Lizotte on A House of Dynamite, Dead Man’s Wire, Claire Simon, Wayne McGregor, Le Souffleur, More Late Fame
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I have been busily watching movies at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, and for my latest episode, I sit down with Chloe Lizotte, the deputy editor of MUBI's film journal Notebook, and the Event Horizon columnist at Reverse Shot. Among the movies we discuss are A House of Dynamite (directed by Kathryn Bigelow), Dead Man’s Wire (Gus Van Sant), Writing Life (Claire Simon), and Le Souffleur (Gaston Solnicki), with some more words on Late Fame (Kent Jones). Lizotte also shares impressions from her visit to Wayne McGregor’s 3D choreographic installation On the Other Earth, in the Dance Biennale.
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Ep. 344: Venice 2025: Jordan Cronk on The Smashing Machine, Late Fame, Nuestra Tierra, Below the Clouds, Barrio Triste, and more
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I have been busily watching movies at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, and for my latest episode, I sit down with critic Jordan Cronk. Among the Venice world premieres we discussed are The Smashing Premiere (directed by Benny Safdie), Nuestra Tierra (Lucrecia Martel), Below the Clouds (Gianfranco Rosi), Late Fame (Kent Jones), Barrio Triste (Stillz), and Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes (Gabriel Azorin).
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Ep. 343: Venice 2025: Guy Lodge on Father Mother Sister Brother, The Testament of Ann Lee, The Wizard of the Kremlin, Rose of Nevada
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I have been busily watching movies at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, and for my latest episode, I sit down with critic Guy Lodge of Variety. Among the Venice world premieres we discussed are Father Mother Sister Brother (directed by Jim Jarmusch), The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold), The Wizard of the Kremlin (Olivier Assayas), Rose of Nevada (Mark Jenkin), and an additional pick that I’ll let Guy reveal himself.
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Ep. 342: Venice 2025: Glenn Kenny on Frankenstein, Bugonia, Jay Kelly, After the Hunt, No Other Choice, Broken English, Lo Spettro
Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. This week I have been busily watching movies at the Venice Film Festival, and for my first episode, I sit down with critic Glenn Kenny, who’s writing for RogerEbert.com. Among the Venice world premieres discussed are Frankenstein (directed by Guillermo del Toro), Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos), No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook), Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach), After the Hunt (Luca Guadagnino), the Marianne Faithfull documentary Broken English (Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth), and a selection from the Venice Classics lineup of restorations, Riccardo Freda’s Lo Spettro (The Ghost), starring original scream queen Barbara Steele. Glenn also talks about his work on the Biennale College Cinema, the results of which are screening at the festival.
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