LAST AND FIRST MEN

Three levels combine in this film: 16mm black-and-white footage of Yugoslavian brutalist monuments, the atmospheric sounds of Jóhann Jóhannsson, and excerpts from the 1930 science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon that gives the film its title. Tilda Swinton reads these text passages with a striking lack of affect, slipping into the role of last human being, a survivor of an advanced society two billion years in the future. They are memos to a distant past, documenting utopia – and its impending destruction. LAST AND FIRST MEN is a hypnotic work of art.