Shot at the Virginia Theatre over fifteen years of Ebertfest, and woven together with archival footage stretching back to the festival's earliest days, the film unfolds inside the very event Roger and Chaz Ebert built, using it as both backdrop and beating heart. Her search leads her through the films he believed in, guided by Roger himself, whose writing becomes the voice of the film, illuminating his philosophies, his passions, and his lifelong conviction that movies have the power to make us more empathetic, more curious, and more human.

To answer that question, the film gathers the people who knew it firsthand. Fellow critics and the young writers Roger mentored speak to his generosity and his singular gift for language. And a remarkable group of filmmakers he championed over decades, including Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Werner Herzog, Tilda Swinton, Ava DuVernay, Joachim Trier, and Ramin Bahrani, reflect on what it meant to have Roger in their corner. Together they paint a portrait of a man who never stopped believing that a great movie could change a life, because so many of them had changed his.

Not Rated
57min




EBERTFEST 2026 "THE LAST DANCE" is presented by:




Roger Ebert’s Film Festival celebrates films, genres, and formats that have been overlooked by distributors, audiences, and/or critics. These include independent, international, and studio films that did not win wide audiences; overlooked formats such as 70mm; and overlooked genres such as documentaries and musicals.

The festival screens one film at a time – so that everyone sees the same films – promoting a strong sense of community among audience members, filmmakers, guests, students, and scholars.

Ebertfest was founded in 1999 by Roger and Chaz Ebert, with Professor Nathaniel Kohn as Festival Director. Roger was an Urbana native, U of I Journalism graduate, and Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic for The Chicago Sun-Times.

For a complete list of the films, visit this page.

For more, visit www.ebertfest.com