The Last Soul on a Summer Night

Nathan Walker is a young man living in Chicago Heights, Illinois, many miles south of downtown Chicago. He finds himself entwined every day in the lives of his neighbors. They're polite, friendly, down-to-earth people. But in any community, individuals have their own private passions that their neighbors will never know. Each has a dark secret, a disappointed dream, a fervent hope, a spirit-breaking fear. We accompany Nathan while he comes of age and observe with him as the layers fall away from this seemingly random array of ordinary people who, below their practiced, Christian surfaces, are extraordinarily human.

A man disappears on the same day he makes his fortune in this re-imagining of a true story, which is still unsolved. In this version of the disappearance of Ambrose Small, the setting has been changed from Toronto, 1919, to Chicago of the same year. Gorgeous cinematography in mostly black and white underscores the racial tensions of the time, while intentional anachronisms and Calgary-raised director Daniel Nearing’s postmodern vision give the film an otherworldly quality. While the investigation of Small’s case is a central device, Nearing’s real objective is to expose the characters of the time and stoke the flames of mystery.

Set in Chicago, Montréal, and Paris, a quiet story about love and conscience, drawn from multiple literary sources, including Theodore Dreiser’s eponymous 1900 novel, Alexandre Dumas fils' La Dame aux Camélias, Abbé Prévost’s Manon Lescaut, and Sherwood Anderson’s “Brothers.”