Top 150 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2019: #69. Last Words – Jonathan Nossiter

Last Words

For his fourth narrative feature, US based filmmaker Jonathan Nossiter embarks on the long-gestating Last Words, a French-Italian co-production through Paris-based Doc & Films International, Paris-based Serge Lalou with Films d’Ici, and Donatello Palermo from Rome-based Stemal Entertainment. The sci-fi pre-apocalyptic affair lines up an equally diverse cast including Nick Nolte, Stellan Skarsgard, Valeria Golino, Alba Rohrwacher, and Charlotte Rampling (who previously starred in Nossiter’s Signs & Wonders in 2000 and Rio Sex Comedy in 2010). Nossiter won the Grand Jury Prize in Sundance with his 1997 debut Sunday. He competed in Berlin with 2000’s Signs & Wonders and his globalization/wine documentary Mondovino was selected for the Cannes competition in 2004.

Gist: Co-written by French-Argentinean author Santiago Amigorena (who also wrote the novel upon which this is based, and worked previously with Nossiter on the script for Rio Sex Comedy), the year is 2085 and no human babies have been born in over a decade. A group of disparate survivors respond to a call to meet in Athens, where the film’s narrator Jo, a boy of African descent, aims to make the world’s last film. Rampling stars as a mysterious Balkan woman named Baltk.

Release Date/Prediction: Shooting in Italy, France, and Morocco through the autumn of 2018, a return to Cannes could be possible for Nossiter, though the scope of the project could also suggest a bow out of TIFF/Venice in 2019.