Parky At the Pictures (10/7/2026)

(Review of The Last One For the Road; and Misan Harriman: Shoot the People)

THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD.

Italian road comedies are something of a rarity. Among the best set on the peninsula are Dino Risi's Il sorpasso (1962), Mario Monicelli's Lovers and Liars (1979), Alberto Sordi's In viaggio con papà (1982), Enrico Oldoini's Una botta di vita (1988), Gabriele Salvatores's On Tour (1990), Rocco Papaleo's Basilicata Coast to Coast (2010), while Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place (2011) strayed further afield. Joining the itinerary is

Francesco Sossai's The Last One For the Road, which the sophomore director and co-scenarist Adriano Candiago have based on their own experiences.

Killing time while waiting for a friend's plane to land in Treviso, fiftysomethings Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla) neck several bottles of beer before discovering it's a non-alcoholic brand. They decamp to an American bar, where Carlobianchi bums a cigarette off a German tourist looking for the `ghost' Lisbon-Treviso-Budapest highway and Doriano throws up after scarfing the shrimp cocktail of a woman on her hen night.

Having given some traffic cops the slip by going into `stealth mode', the friends come across some students celebrating the graduation of Giulia Antonia (Giulia Bertasi). Following them to a club, Carlobianchi and Doriano take pity on Neapolitan architecture student, Giulio (Filippo Scotti), who leaves suddenly after watching his beloved do cocaine in the washroom. The lads persuade him to join them in a quiet bar, where a musician strums his acoustic guitar as they tell him about Genio (Andrea Pennacchi), the third musketeer who had gone to Austrian brothels with them and scoffed snails and polenta on cigarette and petrol smuggling runs to Slovenia. They had known him since his farmer father had been crushed by a tractor when he was a boy, but he had run out on them just before the 2008 financial crash and laid low in Argentina.

Giulio insists he has to go home to collect his laptop for a tutorial, but Carlobianchi drives him to Treviso airport, where the pals get into a fight after learning that Genio's flight is due to land at Venice Airport. They coax Giulio into joining them for a sentimental trip to Mery's Tavern, only to discover it's closed down. He asks what happened with Genio and they tell him that they used to run a scam at the glasses factory where they all worked. Each week, they would take the cast-offs out of the trash and sell them at Genio's mother's house. No one suspected anything and they made a tidy sum over the years. But the company got wind of the graft and Genio fled to Argentina, having destroyed any evidence linked to his friends and having buried his share of the loot in a tin box.

Carlobianchi reveals that he quickly spent his share (buying the Jaguar S-Type they've been riding in) and had to move back with his parents after his marriage failed. The factory closed during the credit crunch and workers lost their homes. But Carlobianchi and Doriano managed to survive and are now keen to reconnect with Genio, who is free to return because the statute of limitations on his crime has expired and they hope he will give them a handout. Over a salami cuts lunch, Carlobianchi explains why the theory of marginal utility doesn't apply to last drinks before Giulio asks if they can go home.

A comfort break lands the trio outside the villa owned by Count Bugnello (Denis Fasolo), who mistakes them for the surveyors he has been expecting. Giulio uses his architectural nous to convince him of their credentials and the Count is pleased when he peruses some maps and says there are grounds on which to appeal to prevent the Lisbon-Treviso-Budapest highway from destroying his Renaissance garden. After they sample some daiquiris, Giulio admires a capriccio landscape on the wall, while Carlobianchi passionately kisses the Count in order secure some generous travel expenses.

Slipping out before the real surveyors arrive, the imposters go to see Stefi, a prostitute who gives Giulio his first sexual experience, while Doriano opens the coffee table book on the Brion Memorial that he had bought as a graduation gift for Giulia Antonia. He returns to the car with a sheepish grin and gets drunk enough to dance with Carlobianchi in a quiet bar. As they drive on, however, Doriano spots Genio out of the car window and they follow him to a supermarket, where he's been doing some late-night shopping. He has little to say for himself and the trio feels let down and hits a bar to process their emotions.

They decide to call on Genio and find the door to his apartment open. Inside a box of photos and mementos, they find a map indicating the burial site and they drive there to find him hammering the concrete floor of an unfinished building. Giulio tells him that there's no point digging, as the foundations were so deep that the box would have been found or trashed. Feeling deflated, they seek out a bar, where Carlobianchi spots Primo (Gianni Da Re) on the fruit machine. He asks if the rumour was true that owner Cavalier Fadìga (Roberto Citran) had given him a Rolex when he retired from the glasses factory and he slowly raises his arm to show the timepiece beneath his sleeve. Barely able to walk, the sloshed threesome crash at Carlobianchi's place, with his mother chiding them for leading Giulio astray.

The next morning, Giulio calls Giulia Antonia in Verona and asks if they can meet up. She agrees and Carlobianchi and Doriano are proud of him. Listening across the patio, the former's father tells them to grow up, but Doriano shrugs that they're too old. They take a detour to the Brion Memorial and Giulio is amazed that they had never been to see something so significant on their doorstep. Rushing to the station, they bundle him on to the train with warm hugs, but the door closes and he fails to hear Carlobianchi's last piece of advice. Moreover, he's too engrossed in the selotaped map of their travels to notice the pair zooming alongside the track in the Jaguar and waving and shouting through the passenger window.

Heading back into town, Carlobianchi and Doriano buy cornets. The former complains that his tastes weird, as he had been expecting something bitter rather than sweet. As they cross a busy road, the ice cream gets dislodged and, as the credits roll, tyres splodge over it on the hot tarmac.

If ever a sequel was in order, a strong case could be made for this splendidly ramshackle odyssey, which often feels as though Gianni Di Gregorio had made a mellow midlife version of Stephen Frears's Mr Jolly Lives Next Door (1988). It scooped eight David di Donatello awards, including Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Producing, Casting, and Editing. Sergio Romano pipped Pierpaolo Capovilla to Best Actor, while Roberto Citran lost out as Best Supporting Actor for his prologue cameo as Cavalier Fadìga. Scandalously, neither Massimiliano Kuveiller nor Marco Spigariol (aka Krano) won their respective cinematography and score, although the latter did pick up Best Song for `Ti', one of the many memorable musical moments that complement the meandering action to perfection.

Romano and Capovilla feel like old drinking buddies, as they seem to know what the other is going to say when they feel the need to speak. But Filippo Scotti is anything but a third wheel, as he starts to shed Giulio's inhibitions and surprise his travelling companions when he begins to hold his own in the supping stakes. Wisely, Sossai discreetly leaves Giulio at Stefi's door, as venturing inside with him would have changed our perceptions. Similarly, Carlobianchi and Doriano come across as genial Beckettian rogues rather than dissolute pests, even when they gatecrash a late-night street celebration and usher the students into a seedy bar with pool tables. It's even difficult to hold them to account for their role in stealing from their workplace or for letting Genio carry the can in exile for all these years, as they've not had it easy themselves and they clearly don't mean any harm by drowning their regrets rather than their sorrows.

Cesare Zavattini, the theoretical father of neo-realism, once suggested that the perfect film would focus on a man to whom nothing happens. This beguiling vino-realismo picaresque could almost qualify, as Carlobianchi and Doriano bob along like corks as they're swept along on a tide of half-remembered memories in the hope of finding the next last drink to help them forget how life has actually turned out for them and their community. Despite the pervading tinge of melancholy, the pair never feel sorry for themselves, even as they relives moments from their inglorious past, such as those in the `Merica' montage, with its wonderfully eccentric strummed acoustic accompaniment.

By all accounts, Sossai and Candiago spent years collecting eavesdropped bon mots in various Italian bars. But the director has clearly also been keeping tabs on the Venetian countryside and the varied states of repair of the buildings that line its once bustling roads. Editor Paolo Cottignola employs relaxed rhythms to link these superbly photographed 35mm and Super 16mm images, while he also proves a dab hand at dropping in flashbacks, one of which sees Giulio replace Genio, as he tries to put himself in Carlobianchi and Doriano's shoes, while sending a note to himself not to take their example to heart. No one could mistake these two for role models, but they are hale fellows well met and it would be nice to spend further time in their company, even if they remain on a road to nowhere.

MISAN HARRIMAN: SHOOT THE PEOPLE.

Any documentary worth its salt should resist humblebragging and hagiography. Shoot the People, Andy Mundy-Castle's profile of activist, photographer, film-maker, and administrator Misan Harriman, is guilty of both. Yet it also performs the important service of alerting viewers to the way in which Britain's right-leaning media responds to Black voices in its bid to discredit or silence them.

Following an opening montage defining today's world as a dangerously divided place, Andy Mundy-Castle sits down with Misan Harriman in his Surrey home to note how his energy changes when he gets behind a camera. A latecomer to the form, he confides, `My work, which is observing the human condition and making art that has purpose, is also my passion.' His main brief is chronicling demonstrations, but he also does celebrity work and posed images of placard-wielding protesters are juxtaposed with flattering snaps of Harry and Meghan. Acknowleding the importance of social media to what he does - whether it's posting pictures or speaking to camera - he purrs, `When I see that millions of people have been deeply moved by a photo, that is something that I am proud of.'

Telly clips reveal that Harriman was born in Nigeria and raised in Britain, where he taught himself photography and, influenced by Gordon Parks and Eve Arnold, landed the cover of British Vogue's September issue in 2020. His image of Marcus Rashford and Adwoa Aboah is shown without mention of the fact that Nadine Ijewere had been the first Black photographer to shoot a Vogue cover two years earlier. Instead, Harriman gets to proclaim: `I've somehow managed to tiptoe around the minefield of being a visible voice and a Black voice in a Britain that usually allows a very specific type of noise to come out of the mouths of someone that has the same hue as me.'

Three weeks after the 7 October attacks in 2023, Harriman drives to London to photograph a Ceasefire demonstration. He talks to the camera about the `osmosis of activism', the purpose and importance of protest, and the need to hold idle leaders to account on the streets. He claims only 10% of his time is taken up with taking photographs, with the rest being devoted to `just being in it, you know?' But it's far more instructive watching Harriman interact with marchers, as he seeks permission to photograph placards (whose wording is often the most pertinent thing about his images, alongside the social profile of the persons holding them). He's even chirpy towards the police reinforcements who pass him, as he remarks upon the Michael Mann turn that events have taken with their `looking Hollywood' entrance.

Over images of him making coffee in his kitchen with his dog sprawling on the floor, Harriman provides a rather selective insight into his childhood. Revealing nothing of the wealth and privilege into which he was born, he ponders the lack of paternal love that he excuses his father for, as he hadn't known any himself. He also muses on the importance books, songs, and films played in bolstering him while trying to fit in at an English country boarding school in the 1980s, where casual racism was the norm. His experience has clearly left its scars, while also spurring him on. But one wonders why the context has been redacted, especially as he recently told The Guardian that his family history was worthy of a film of its own.

Crediting his childhood self for pricking his conscience about making good money as a headhunter in the City in the 1990s, Harriman opts not to mention the contacts his lifestyle enabled him to make in ruminating on how he was transformed by Covid isolation and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. His black-and-white photographs of the London protests are exceptional for both their content and their composition and are all the more remarkable given that Swedish wife Camilla had only bought him a camera shortly after he had turned 40 and told him to stop talking about the people who had influenced him and start making his own mark.

Although buoyed by the sense of belonging, Harriman wondered how much of a difference he was making and avers that he is constantly haunted by self-doubt. He shrugs this off, however, to explain how his picture of hockey player Darcy Bourne and her placard reading, `Why is Ending Racism a Debate?', went viral after being shared online by Martin Luther King III. This prompted Harriman to wonder whether protests work, as this cause dates back to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s (when pernicious supremacist views like those shown in a sobering montage largely went unchallenged).

He goes to Atlanta, as part of his education as an activist, and meets Dr King's son. He asks about the responsibility that their kinship entails and they discuss the legacy of George Floyd and the need for sustained change. But Harriman then crosses the room to show King a laptop clip in which he declares that the Bourne photo that King had alighted upon had been the making of him. It seems a puzzlingly rack-focussing thing to do before the segment ends with Martin Luther King, Jr. contemplating in archive footage the need for a revolution in American morality if change is ever going to come.

Over footage of various protests, we hear the voices of American journalist Vincent Bevins, CND's Kate Hudson, and Kamau Franklin from Community Movement Builders credit protest with shifting the agenda in the 21st century. But Harriman is on the move again, as he has gone to Johannesburg to meet archivist David Meyer-Gollan to celebrate the achievement of his photographer friend, Peter Magubane, whose courageous documentation of popular resistance to apartheid had shaped Harriman's views on inequality. He asks Meyer-Gollan if Magubane had been an activist and he corrects him by declaring him a freedom fighter whose camera was a weapon.

Meyer-Gollan gets emotional, as he recalls the beatings and detentions that Magubane endured without bitterness, as hatred would have stopped him doing his job. Harriman insists that he taught him how to use the camera, but accepts that he hasn't laid his life on the line in the same way, as the hero seen breaking down during his testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Outside the Constitutional Court in Braamfontein, Harriman sees the 50-strong group of senior citizens protesting on the steps about the apartheid injustices that have still to be rectified after 30 years. He meets Nomarussia Bonase of the Khulumani Galela Campaign and Thabo Shabangu, who had been shot by the police in 1990. Thence, he covers Chris Landsberg's pro-Palestinian rally at the University of Johannesburg, where he records a social media post about this once being an all-white institution and he commends the power of student protest to bring about change.

Over footage of campus demonstrations, environmentalist and human rights activist Kumi Naidoo and USC's Professor Ben Carrington echo Harriman's view, with the latter claiming protest plays a vital role in shifting society past seemingly intractable problems. Sunday Times reporter Sisanda Aluta Mbolekwa (whose first name is misspelt in the caption) concurs, while Franklin notes that students put their degrees and futures at risk in order to make their voices heard. Harriman faces a barrage of abuse each time he posts and he admits his emotional health goes up and down. His short film, The After (2023), is nominated for an Oscar and he nobly accepts to bear the extra burden that his raised profile will bring. He takes his dog for a walk in the woods and intones in voiceover, `The trees don't give a damn about the Academy Awards, neither does my dog. They do care about what sort of a human being I am, what sort of friend, father I am.' What the trees and your dog care? Do they? Really? Surely someone during the edit heard this and heard a pomposity alarm going off? Which is a shame, as this misstep follows a collection of video clips, in which Harriman draws attention with achingly dejected sadness to the barbarity of some Israeli attacks on Rafah. But the film never quite seems to know whether it's supposed to be a paean to protest and the artistry of

reportage or a smoke blowing puff piece.

Mundy-Castle joins the Harrimans in Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, where he laps up being feted by the media. As she has her hair done in their suite, Camilla tells us that her husband has been seeking out activism around the area, although there's no sign of him at the pro-Palestinian protest taking place near the Oscar venue. Actor Sule Rimi pays them a visit in his tuxedo and he films him ironing his shirt, as he jokes about doing his acceptance speech in a comic Nigerian accent. When Mundy-Castle asks if he feels like an Oscar winner, Harriman replies, `I feel like a man...with a point of view.' Sporting a forest green velvet jacket and an `Artists4Ceasefire' pin, his car passes protests and asks his driver to slow down so he can film them on his phone. They don't, however, prevent him from posing for a selfie on the red carpet or from going inside to collect his $175,000 gift bag.

The next morning, Harriman admits to being disappointed, although `for me, it's about keeping the intentionality and the humility'. He also wants to make sure that Mundy-Castle has got his regret that he chose the party rather than the protest. `It took everything in me to not take my big camera and join the protesters from the red carpet.' he tuts, `and at least shoot them, but I think I would have been arrested and maybe not allowed into the Oscars. But that itch was there.' He consoles himself by identifying with Jonathan Glazer's speech about the hijacking of the Holocaust in accepting his award for The Zone of Interest.

Going for a wander to take some pictures in deprived areas, Harriman opines in voiceover that it's easier for those born into privilege to understand how to rewrite the rulebook because they know how much the deck has been stacked in their favour. He says it would be easy to settle for la dolce vita. `I could be jumping from one film and fashion party to the other,' he smarms in voiceover. `I have plenty of, I guess, celebrity friends that I could be hanging around with and just turn my head away from the pain and inequality of the world.' But that's just not who he is. So, who is he, then?

Returning to London, Harriman throws himself back into the day job. He rightly states on his online feed that the racists are the ones who have not integrated into modern society and he urges people to use the small influence they have to not flinch in expressing their views. However, he can't resist mentioning being at the Oscars while covering a Black Women Matter rally.

On the fourth anniversary of George Floyd's death, Harriman photographs a mural in his memory in Palermo. He then jets to Minneapolis to meet the wonderful Ilhan Omar, who smiles mischievously when a rumble of thunder interrupts their interview. We see a lot of Harriman nodding, as Congresswoman Omar laments the lack of humanity that leaves Black people fighting for equality when it should be recognised and rectified by their counterparts. It's a simple and eloquent contribution and it's the film's undoubted highlight, although it's run close by a clip that runs with Mundy-Castle footage of deprived downtown areas of American cities and shows James Baldwin delivering the immortal lines: `Love has never been a popular movement. And no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.'

At 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, Harriman joins in the George Floyd commemoration and meets Lesley Redmond, the former president of the Minneapolis NAACP, and artist Mari Mansfield, who has painted the names of victims of police violence on the road leading into George Floyd Square. He also chats to four of Floyd's childhood friends. They say things haven't changed much in four years, but they remain optimistic and Harriman concurs that change (even within someone as committed as himself) can sometimes be slow. A brass band leads a procession to the cemetery, where Harriman photographs Floyd's headstone before a haunting drone shot looks down on the line of names on the road, some of which are still being given a new coat of paint.

Ending on a note of deep poignancy, this is such a frustrating documentary. The themes and issues that Mundy-Castle and Harriman wish to explore couldn't be more pressing and there is no doubting the integrity and significance of their project. But it spends so much time indulging Harriman that it loses focus of what really counts. It shouldn't matter that Harriman has shrouded his past and plays down the extent to which his background has shaped the personality that enables him to become such a confident operator, who can seemingly go where he wants to go with no expense spared. But he is given such an easy ride by his director - who never attempts a single probing question on camera - that he is able to present his agenda and spout his truths without blowback.

Some reviewers have made much of the post-Golder Green controversy sparked by Harriman quoting Susan Sontag's 10% theory of society. This occurred after filming ended, but it's curious that no mention is made of the right-wing press's vendetta against Harriman because it felt his activism was at odds with his role as the chair of the Southbank Centre. Similarly, Mundy-Castle seems uncurious about the speed with which Harriman has risen to prominence and what this says about not only about the potency of his photography, but also about the power of the Internet and his astute exploitation of the tools and platforms it offers him. He can be conceited and no one will buy his aw shucks line that he's just `a dad that takes nice pictures, doing his best.' He's certainly no Magubane, but he's also more than a well-heeled influencer with a camera. Mundy-Castle might have sought his views on those who disagree with him or interviewed one of his opponents from the Telegraph, Mail, or Express. However, all we see are some bilefully vile comments from bigots and trolls, which Harriman rather heroically feels obliged to scroll through.

Editor Maeve O'Boyle makes a fine job of linking archive material, with Harriman's one-on-one meetings and his fieldwork. She also embeds his standout pictures in measured montages that highlight the socio-political aspects of the content and the monochrome poetry of the pure image. Even so, more emphasis falls on Harriman the shutterbug rather than the street fighter. Indeed, for someone who spends 90% of his time `being in it', we don't see him doing much protesting. Consequently, because he never engages with his fellow demonstrators other than to ask them to lift their chin, we learn little about either the nature and necessity of protest in the 2020s or the down-and-dirty realities of protest culture.

This is a shame, as Franklin is spot on in noting that this century has been shaped more by people power than any other in history. Of course, it's imperative that the revolution is `televised' and Harriman's use of his status to bear honest witness in drawing attention to struggle is entirely laudable. But, surely, the message should always be more important than the messenger?