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Friday, June 13
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM

Burke Theatre at the US Navy Memorial

701 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004

The Last Class

Director

Elliot Kirschner

Executive Producers

Heather Kinlaw Lofthouse, Ian Cheney

Producers

Heather Kinlaw Lofthouse, Josh Melrod

Editor

Josh Melrod

Consulting Editor

Co-Editor

Assistant Editor

Cinematographers

Ezra Wolfinger (Director of Photography); Brandon Yadegari Moreno, Derek Reich

Additional Cinematography

Music

Sound

Narration

Contact

info@Abramorama.com

A nuanced and deeply personal portrait of master educator Robert Reich, The Last Class follows him as he teaches his final course while reflecting on a period of immense personal and global transformation. While Reich is widely known for his public service, most notably as former Secretary of Labor, as well as for his best-selling books and viral social media posts, he has always considered teaching his true calling. After over 40 years and an extraordinary 40,000 students, he is now preparing for his last class.

Over the course of the film, Reich confronts the impending finality of this chapter and his own aging with increasing candor, introspection, and, ultimately, emotion. He reveals a rawness of feeling he has never shared publicly before. Drawing on his lifetime in politics, he uses his class, “Wealth and Poverty,” to offer a deeper look at why inequalities of income and wealth have widened significantly since the late 1970s and why this poses dangerous risks to society.

One thousand students fill the biggest lecture hall on the UC Berkeley campus, attending the last class to receive Reich’s wisdom and exhortations not to accept that the world has to stay the way it is. His belief in the next generation’s ability to take on this fight is inspiring. The Last Class is a love letter to education.

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Elliot Kirschner

Director, The Last Class

Elliot Kirschner is a New York Times best-selling author and an Emmy Award-winning news and documentary producer. He is the executive producer of the non-profit Science Communication Lab, which produces and distributes science films for public and educational audiences. His previous feature films include Human Nature and The Most Unknown. Elliot began his career at CBS News, reporting and producing for 60 Minutes, Sunday Morning, and The Evening News. His longtime collaboration with Dan Rather led to writing the best-selling book What Unites Us and founding the Steady newsletter on Substack. Elliot now authors the Through the Fog newsletter. THE LAST CLASS marks his directorial debut.

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