Sidewalk Film Center adds talkbacks to The Last Class Birmingham screenings

Sidewalk Film Center turned The Last Class into more than a documentary booking, using the Birmingham run to build a roomful of conversation around Robert Reich, teaching, and public service. The theater scheduled 7 p.m. screenings on May 5 and May 6 with in-person post-show talkbacks, bringing director Elliot Kirschner and producer-executive producer Heather Kinlaw Lofthouse into the room instead of leaving the film to stand on its own.

That format gave the screening a civic charge that fit the subject. The 71-minute film follows Reich, the former U.S. labor secretary, as he reflects on his final class at UC Berkeley, where the film says 1,000 students filled the largest lecture hall on campus. Sidewalk’s programming framed the documentary as a love letter to education, and the story of a professor who spent about 40 years teaching more than 40,000 students gave Birmingham audiences a clear reason to stay after the credits and hear how Kirschner and Lofthouse shaped the film.

Kirschner arrived in Birmingham with a directorial debut that stretches beyond a simple profile piece. The film, released June 27, 2025 and distributed by Abramorama, centers Reich’s lifelong attachment to teaching and his classroom focus on wealth inequality, a subject that connects the movie to the larger public questions Reich has spent decades raising. Lofthouse, who is president of Inequality Media Civic Action and founder of CoffeeKlatch Productions, added another recognizable name to the talkback, underscoring that Sidewalk was not just screening a documentary but staging a conversation with the people who helped make it.

The Last Class also sat inside a larger Sidewalk calendar that made the point even clearer. The organization listed the film for May 5-7 in Birmingham while also rolling out the 28th Annual Sidewalk Film Festival, set for August 24-30 in Downtown Birmingham’s Historic Theatre District. VIP and Weekend passes went on sale May 1, with day passes following on July 1, and the same homepage that promoted The Last Class also pointed to the May 9 Salsa Showdown at Cahaba Brewing Company, a fundraiser for Sidewalk’s year-round educational programs.

That mix of screenings, fundraising, and filmmaker engagement is how Sidewalk keeps its audience coming back between festival seasons. A single documentary run becomes part of a bigger Birmingham film culture, one where a title about a retiring professor can lead directly into a conversation about education, inequality, and why independent film still works best when the people behind it are in the room.