The Last Thing I Saw

Ep. 433: Pawel Pawlikowski on Fatherland, casting Sandra Hüller, his early documentaries, cinematic inspirations, and more

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. One of my favorite films at Cannes this year was Fatherland, the latest from Pawel Pawlikowski, who also directed Ida, Cold War, and My Summer of Love. So I jumped at the chance to speak with the filmmaker when he visited New York for the release of Fatherland, which is now in theaters. We talked about how he developed its story about Thomas Mann traveling across Germany in 1949 with his daughter, Erika, and how he cast Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler (as Erika and Thomas, respectively). I also couldn’t resist asking him about the early documentaries he made for the BBC about Dostoevsky’s great-grandson and other piquant subjects; about some of his cinematic influences; and about the status of a film he once had in development starring Joaquin Phoenix.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 432: Bassam Tariq on Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. Written and directed by Bassam Tariq, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother knocked me flat at the Toronto film festival this year with its richly imagined action drama about a hit man turned single father to three children, who can’t quite escape the demands of his profession. Mahershala Ali plays a man going through a crisis of faith and fatherhood, in a complicated America of mosques, Christian sects, unforgiving social services, and online porn empires. It’s the latest from Tariq, whose work I first became acquainted with at True/False through the documentary These Birds Walk, which he co-directed over a decade ago. I was so happy and honored to discuss Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother with the filmmaker as the movie hits VOD and receives renewed attention. Tariq is also the director of Mogul Mowgli (2020, starring Riz Ahmed) and episodes of Bait.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 431: Robert Greene on You Can See Everything + Nathan Fielder + performance + documentary

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. When I saw You Can See Everything, I immediately wanted to make sense of what I had seen by talking through it with someone else. And who better to talk through the latest Nathan Fielder project than another filmmaker who constantly explores the complexities of performance and portrayal in documentary: Robert Greene, the director of Kate Plays Christine, Procession, Actress, Bisbee ’17, and most recently Too Much Sugar (which had its world premiere last month in Venice). Greene generously shared his thoughts on You Can See Everything (directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim) and its blockbuster chronicle of Fielder embedding with convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans.

You Can See Everything is in theaters now. Greene is also the filmmaker-in-chief at the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri and is on the faculty of its School of Visual Studies.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 430: Jessica Green on American Regionalism at BAM: Giant, When I Get Home, Brigham City, The Delta, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Run Tecato Run, Shakedown

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. A new series at BAM in Brooklyn explores American Regionalism in film, showing the different ways the tapestry of American cultures and identities appear in movies. It’s curated by Jessica Green, a programmer whose work I’ve followed for many years, and who now also works in development at She Spun Films. Among the films discussed are the Texas rancher epic Giant (directed by George Stevens, starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean), the visual album When I Get Home (Solange Knowles), Virginia-set The Delta (Ira Sachs), Mormon police procedural Brigham City (Richard Dutcher), Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper), addiction drama Run Tecato Run (Efrain Gutiérrez), Pacific Northwest thriller Paydirt (Penny Allen), Montana-set Bitterroot (Vera Brunner-Sung), Corpus: A Home Movie About Selena (Lourdes Portillo), Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles), and Los Angeles black-lesbian nightclub documentary Shakedown (Leilah Weinraub).

The series “Area Coded: American Regionalism in Film” runs October 23 to 29 at BAM and was programmed by Jessica Green.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Ep. 429: Alissa Wilkinson on Artificial, Digger, You Can See Everything, One in a Million, 14th, The Social Reckoning

Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. As the fall air turns crisp and cool, Big Movies now stalk the land, and to talk about some of them, I chatted with Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times. Which is to say, we recorded an episode, and among the films we discussed are: Artificial (directed by Luca Guadagnino, starring Andrew Garfield, Yura Borisov, Monica Barbaro), Digger (directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, starring Tom Cruise, Sandra Hüller), the new documentary One in a Million (directed by Itab Azzam and Jack Macinnes), 14th (directed by Ava DuVernay), and The Social Reckoning (directed by Aaron Sorkin, starring Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong). We also share a few initial thoughts on the newly released You Can See Everything, from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim.

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Photo by Steve Snodgrass