Last and First Men

LAST AND FIRST MEN is a contemplation about time, about how our humanity will change, and how our planet will look a billion years from now. The traces of our lives on this planet compose our future history. What will still stand on the ground is a collective choice.

The film is the first and only film directed by late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who was responsible for the original scores of among others Villeneuve’s PRISONERS, SICARIO and ARRIVAL, and Aronofsky’s MOTHER!.

Jóhannsson based his film on the science fiction novel with the same name by Olaf Stapledon. His visual masterpiece, shot on 16mm film, takes us to alienated landscapes, zooming in and out of brutalist World War II monuments and memorials from former Yugoslavia. We watch concrete forms stand in for the architecture of an almost extinct species, while we hear the last man, narrated by Tilda Swinton.