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The Last Tour (2004) takes as a point of departure the laws that increasingly regulate our access to, and perception of, nature in our visits to national parks. At its core is what should be a thrilling excursion—a sightseeing tour of the Matterhorn in a hot-air balloon. Instead, the film is lonely and disturbing, and turns a bedazzling region into a mix of fading memories, anxieties about the future, and suggestions of postcards and travel posters. A seamless blend of fiction and fact, the film is set in the "near future." Intermittent textual announcements declare that the Matterhorn will shortly be closed to visitors, as if it were an aging attraction in an amusement park, and in one section of the film images of the actual Matterhorn mix with archival images of the ersatz miniature at Disneyland in California. The film suggests the possibility of a blank space reappearing on the map, a reference to the world before the era of discovery.

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