Is a post apocalyptic utopian film possible? The world in 2086. Europe is a vast desert. There is no more nature. Only powdered nutrients in tin cans for the last survivors. There is no more culture. Only a few film fragments under the rubble of what’s left of Bologna. And a few ancient Greek temples left standing in Athens. There is no more society. Not even the memory of a handshake. Is this a hopeless world? No… thanks to the magic of the human imagination. Last Words is a film that confronts our species-threatening ecological catastrophes without losing the courage of tenderness or the joy of being together to tell each other stories. Urgent ones. Like the last person on earth in 2086: a young African. The Last African. Embodied by the non actor Kalipha Touray, Gambian refugee at the age of 16 who has already seen the end of the world in real life. Together with legendary actor Nick Nolte who plays a former film director from a by-gone age, their characters rediscover cinema. And the sense of living. The joy of being together (after enforced solitude), the joy of culture (after so much barbarity), the joy of beauty (after so much ugliness). Above all, they rediscover the need to bear witness. Because at the end of the world everything is important. Like the last pregnancy on earth, which belongs to the venerable Charlotte Rampling, playing a Baltic woman of unknowable origins. But also an unknowable future. Or the acts of heroism – or folly – of Polish doctor Stellan Skarsgård. The characters of Kalipha and Nick bring with them on their epic journey to Athens the last film projector on earth – to share the joy of cinema – and the pieces to build the last movie camera. The last home movie. The last witness to the last acts of our species. In Athens they also find the laboratory-garden of Alba Rohrwacher, seeking to reboot nature and save humanity before everyone dies off from a coughing virus. Last Words. A post apocalyptic science fiction or a vision of humanity’s last chance today?

Jonathan Nossiter