The Last Thing I Saw

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). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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! Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

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). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass