Film
With LAST AND FIRST MEN, Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson offers a reflection on time, on the future of humanity and on what our planet might look like in a billion years’ time. The traces we leave behind become part of the history that follows us. What ultimately endures is a collective choice.
The work takes us through alienating landscapes and brutalist monuments in the former Yugoslavia, whilst Tilda Swinton’s voice resounds as the last human.
Two billion years in the future, a future human species is on the brink of extinction. Virtually all that remains of the world are solitary, surrealist monuments, which broadcast their message across a desolate and inhospitable landscape.
Last and First Men is the first and only film directed by the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who has also composed the film scores for Villeneuve’s Prisoners, Sicario and Arrival, and Aronofsky’s Mother!.
Jóhannsson based the film on the 1930 science fiction novel of the same name by the British author Olaf Stapledon. The novel traces the evolution of humankind over a period of two billion years and across eighteen successive human species.
Filmed on 16mm, the work takes us through alienating landscapes, past the brutalist monuments and memorials of the former Yugoslavia. The concrete structures thus bear witness to a humanity that has all but vanished.Against this monumental backdrop, the voice of Tilda Swinton is heard as that of the last human being.
The screening on 1 December will be preceded by an introduction.
01.12.2026
Can’t make it today? Don’t worry! This film will also be screened on 15.12.2026 (without an introduction).
19.45h
Director: Jóhann Jóhannsson
2020, Iceland
GreenGround Productions
Distribution: Films Boutique
Running time: 70 mins.
Language: Spoken language: EN
Narrator: Tilda Swinton
Based on Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future by Olaf Stapledon.
De Cinema
Maarschalk Gérardstraat 4
2000 Antwerp
€9 standard
€6,5 reduction
Flanders Architecture Institute x De Cinema
the Government of Flanders
Need assistance or want to use extra facilities? Email tickets@destudio.com and they will be happy to help.
