Snyder filmed the entirety of The Last Photograph handheld

The guy who filled the screen with gods in slow motion made the new film sitting on an apple crate, with the camera in his hand. All plans. From first to last.

The Last Photograph had its first public screening at the Toronto Film Festival, and hours later Zack Snyder sat down with journalist Josh Horowitz, from the Happy Sad Confused podcast, to talk about the reception. The interview came out on September 17, 2026. In Josh’s description, the film follows two men on a journey into the river, in the style of Apocalypse Now: a lost photographer and a man looking to settle accounts after a family tragedy.

The project is more than two decades old. It already had a budget of 50 million dollars within Warner, it already had another director, it already had other stars. It never came out, because it was the middle film: too small to be a blockbuster, too expensive to be cheap. The break came when the feature film about the UFC was shelved. He saved a little money, called his friends and went to film.

It’s the smallest budget of his life, by far, and the amount is still a secret. The account closed because he accumulated roles: he was director of photography and camera operator. And he discovered that he prefers it that way. He said it’s more intimate, less tedious, and that he’s more interested in the film when he’s responsible for each frame. The experience became a personal test: did he still know how to make films without the giant machine around him?

If I have a camera and an actor, I can make a movie.

Zack Snyder at Happy Sad Confused, 09/17/2026, at 15:00

The critics were split, as they always are with him. Fans loved it, part of the press hated it. And Snyder is at peace: he said he read a review criticizing the film before he even saw it, and thought it was great, because indifference is the only reaction he doesn’t accept. He also took the opportunity to dismantle the idea that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Kitsch, in the noble sense of the word, is his favorite genre, and it is in the DNA of everything he has filmed.

It was his first festival since Berlin, when he took 300 and heard from the German press that he was a fascist filmmaker. This time he came out laughing.

The film is looking for a distributor, it wants a big screen, and the cut shown is the final one. When it arrives, we’ll see it together.