The Last Class

On the first day of class, hundreds of students queue to get into a Berkeley lecture hall and take their seats to Aretha Franklin's "Respect". It's the start of Robert Reich's last semester at the University of California, where he's taught since 2006, and 'The Last Class' follows him through it. His course on wealth and poverty, with around 1,000 students, looks at why income and wealth inequality has kept growing since the late 1970s, but what he's really after is teaching them to think for themselves.

Reich worked in the Ford and Carter administrations, was Bill Clinton's Labor Secretary from 1993 to 1997 and advised Barack Obama. He's also become a social media star, and even turned up in an episode of 'The Simpsons'. Still, he's always seen himself as a teacher first, and over four decades at Harvard, Brandeis and Berkeley he taught more than 40,000 students.

Between classes he talks about the multiple epiphyseal dysplasia that left him 4ft 11in tall, the bullying he went through as a boy and how it shaped the way he sees people with less power. He doesn't much like the word retirement, either. And when his students sound defeated, he leaves them with one rule: pessimism is fine, cynicism is not.

This is Elliot Kirschner's first film as director. A former CBS News producer and longtime collaborator of Dan Rather, he'd previously produced documentaries such as 'Human Nature'. The producer is Heather Kinlaw Lofthouse, who runs Reich's nonprofit Inequality Media. Unlike 'Inequality for All' and 'Saving Capitalism', where Reich laid out his economic ideas, this one is about the teacher.

Turned down by several festivals, it premiered at DC/DOX in Washington in June 2025, and Abramorama opened it in two US cinemas on 27 June. Extended runs and encore screenings had taken it past $600,000 by September. Critics have been mostly positive, though several wanted more of his lectures and his politics.

• Documentary
• Biography