Last and First Men

Set millions of years in the future, the film follows the last members of the human race as their existence nears its end. They reach back across time to send a message to the people of the present, one that carries both a warning and a request for help. Around this appeal the film builds a larger account of how humanity evolved, declined and held on to hope. The story is drawn from Olaf Stapledon's 1930 novel of the same name, a work that spans vast stretches of time and imagines successive human species.

Jóhann Jóhannsson directs, working from a screenplay he wrote with José Enrique Macián. The Icelandic production was made through Zik Zak Filmworks, with Thor Sigurjonsson, Sturla Brandth Grøvlen and Jóhannsson serving as producers. Tilda Swinton provides the narration as a voice performer. The film runs 72 minutes and blends drama with science fiction, pairing its speculative narrative with images of large concrete monuments, which stand in for the traces a distant civilisation leaves behind as it faces extinction.

Released in February 2020, the film arrived after Jóhannsson's earlier directing work on the documentary shorts End of Summer and Copenhagen Dreams. Audience response has been moderate: on IMDb it holds a rating of 6.7 from around 5,000 votes, while on TMDB its score is 6.3 from roughly 144 votes. The wider gap in vote numbers suggests the film reached a broader general audience on the first platform and a smaller, more specialised one on the second.