Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The Cannes Film Festival begins this week, and part of its celebration of our collective return to movies is the world premiere of The Story of Film: A New Generation, from filmmaker and critic Mark Cousins. The latest work from Cousins looks at the most recent decade in cinema and sets out to pick the movies that brought something new to the art form. Cousins has taken on the herculean task of charting film history before, most famously on an even larger scale with The Story of Film: An Odyssey, and with works such as Women Make Film, A Story of Children and Film, and early on, Cinema Iran. I reached Cousins at his office slash editing suite, and we talked about a few of the movies he selected from the 2010s (and a few that he didn’t). But he also had fascinating reflections about how we all watch cinema, about VR, and about his childhood memories of watching movies.

Stay tuned to The Last Thing I Saw for more highlights in the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

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Opening music: “Monserrate” by The Minarets

Photo by Steve Snodgrass