The Moment
(2025 | USA | Aidan Zamiri | 103 min)

In which the only rational response to sudden intense fame is to fictionalize a version even more absurd, and in doing so convey some glancing approximation of the honest, if deeply subjective, truth of modern pop celebrity. The result of this trip through the looking glass is an often actually funny mockumentary that captures the horrors of fame, indulgence of ego, and massive pressures to capitulate to the demands of capitalism.

Aidan Zamiri’s feature film debut finds Charli xcx at a crossroads, namely the thick of “brat summer” (if anyone can still recall the more cautiously optimistic and relatively simpler pleasures of 2024, already seeming like decades ago). After years of making dance pop on an indie scale, her latest album’s blown all the way up to seemingly inescapable ubiquity. It’s a far cry from the temporary boost she got from “Boom Clap” appearing in a cancer kids movie. Everyone, their mothers, frat brothers, and any wannabe influencer worth their salt are Apple Dancing on TikTok for clout. For her part, Charli is suddenly weary of the neon green phenomenon turning cringe. Her label, on the other hand, wants to milk #bratSummerForever. It’s easy to imagine that there’s some truth in this conflict, which makes it all the more ripe for a break from reality.

Such a heady and conflicted time in an ascending superstar’s life leaves no shortage of real-life-inspired characters ripe for satire. At the label, there are try-hard cool-hunting A&R nerds and Rosanna Arquette as a no fucks given executive. Among the pop star’s orbit, Jamie Demetriou gives a consistently funny performance as Charli’s haplessly beleaguered yet still trusted agent (he’s vaguely channeling a British version of Tony Hale’s Gary from Vice, but far less pathetic). Shot in the loose handheld, fly-on-the-wall style made popular by The Office, honed by Armando Iannucci, and polished to perfection by Succession, we’re dropped into the massive apparatus of fame. It’s glossy and engaging, conveying the feeling of having won a VIP ticket into elite company to witness the jolt of all-encompassing, sudden, and not entirely comfortable fame thrust upon her. From this vantage, Charli (or “Charli”) is an instantly sympathetic figure as she juggles the stress of shifting power dynamics among her growing entourage. I’m not enough of a brat-ologist to connect all the dots, but I’m sure people will have ideas about the identities of loosely-veiled characters played by Kate Berlant, Isaac Powell, and especially an image-obsessed superstar channeled by Rachel Sennott. Kylie Jenner, on the other hand, is too famous not to play herself when she shows up later in the film in a strong cameo.

This first act unfolds as a stroboscopic whirlwind, heavy on jokes and skewering of the bizarre realities of the celebrity apparatus. It culminates with an absurd scheme by a failing bank to gain relevance among Charli’s young queer audience by issuing a “brat card”. For anyone who’s remotely paying attention to the grotesque vampirism of the last decade, these are hardly revelations but they are very funny.Playing a version of herself, Charli initially comes across as almost a passive victim of her own success.

Eventually, the pace takes a breath, slowing to confront the film’s primary concern: the weightier topic of creative control and the challenge of whether to compromise independence in service of maintaining and growing an audience. In navigating these hard choices that she allows herself (or her character) to also be fair game for criticism. On one side of the rift is her longtime trusted creative director (Hailey Gates), there from the beginning and committed to designing an aggressive tour aesthetic to match the album’s cocaine-fueled club night inspirations. The label, however, sees the potential for even bigger audiences by way of a mass-market tour documentary (the sort that have become de rigeur among a certain set of highly-commodified lifestyle artists). Into the fray comes a deeply uncool, highly successful, and likely problematic film director played with poisonous soft-spoken sincerity by Alexander Skarsgård. Rather than confront tough choices, “Charli” instead crashes out in Ibiza on an influencer hustle, enabling a descent into personal and professional madness and catalyzing the primary drama for the remainder of the push toward the finish line.

As producer, star, and with a “inspired by an original idea by” credit, it’s smart that the pop star doesn’t shield herself (or this heightened version) from satire. As the arena show spins out of her control and toward something embarrassingly foreign to the vision that brought success, her character is forced to endure the many indignities of her own making. Ultimately though, even in avoiding a celebrity hagiography by swerving from rock-umentary to mockumentary, one has to acknowledge that this is nevertheless a project in primary service of developing the ongoing image of the real world Charli xcx. That it happens to do so with tounge-in-cheek is all part of the brand. While superfans might get more out of it, even to casuals, it’s surprisingly successful in execution, using the fiction between reality and fantasy to make knowing winks, and finally turning the page on brat summer on Charli’s own terms.

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An earlier version of this review ran when The Moment played as an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It will be released theatrically in Seattle on February 6th including a run at SIFF Uptown.
Lead image courtesy of Sundance Institute.