Zach Snyder’s new movie is about drugs, violence and photography

Zack Snyder has directed movies about a lot of things: superheroes, space, ancient Greeks, owls, you name it. With his next film, it seems like we can add photography to that list.

According to the synopsis, the movie, called The Last Photograph, is about a former DEA agent teaming up with a “washed-up junkie war photographer” to try and find his niece and nephew after their parents were murdered. The trailer (and the title) imply that photography will play some role in the story. There are scenes showing a darkroom, photos being taken at a crime scene, a slow-motion shot of a camera exploding, and several moody frames of someone raising a rangefinder to their eye, presumably witnessing horrors off-screen.

Speaking of: we’ll put the trailer below, but heed the warning in the first few seconds. It’s graphic in pretty much every way it can be, including an exceptional amount of violence. Even if you’re fine with that, it’s probably not something to watch at work.

Of course, being a camera site, we were interested in what cameras the characters were using on-screen, especially since Zack Snyder is a known photography buff (he’s reportedly the cinematographer for the movie, too, as he was on 2021’s Army of the Dead, which he shot almost entirely at F0.95 using rehoused vintage optics*). From what we can tell, the photographer character uses Yashica rangefinder – probably an Electro 35CC from the early 70s, based on the markings – and what looks like a Leica M10 Monochrom, a camera Snyder is demonstrably familiar with.

The Yashica isn’t a stranger to the silver screen, either; Andrew Garfield used one in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man (back when Spider-Man movies featured the version of Peter Parker who works as a photographer). While the brand wasn’t really known as a go-to for photojournalists, it also wouldn’t be that surprising to hear of a war photographer using a film rangefinder with a fixed 35mm F1.8 lens.

We don’t see a ton of movies about photography, so it’s interesting to be getting a movie from a big-name director that seems to at least feature the art form as an important part of the story. The last film we got like that was Alex Garland’s Civil War, which focused mostly on the role of reporting and war photography (much to people’s surprise, given that it was released during a contentious US election and was set against the backdrop of a fictional second civil war in the country).

What looks to me like a Leica M10 Monochrom (based on the lack of branding) and the Yashica Electro 35CC in a darkroom. Of course, you’d only need to develop film from the later, as the M10 is a digital camera.Zack Snyder, via TIFF

According to The Hollywood Reporter, it may be a while before we get to see The Last Photograph. It’s set to premiere on September 13 at TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival), but no one has bought distribution rights to it yet. The film is apparently a passion project for Snyder, who has been kicking the idea around since the mid-2000s. While it certainly seems like it’ll be an intense watch, I’m excited for whenever I do get to see it. In part because of the photography aspect, but also because the cinematography in it looks gorgeous, and it’s always interesting to see a Hollywood director take a big artistic swing.

* The effect is… strange. At times it works and provides a unique aesthetic, at others it borders on distracting. I actually didn’t know about the creative choice when I started watching the movie, but pretty early into it I turned to a friend and said something along the lines of “what is going on with this cinematography?”