Pop superstar Charli XCX is delving into the complexities of fame and artistic expectation with her new meta mockumentary, The Moment, which recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
The film sees the Essex-born artist playing a version of herself, grappling with the aftermath of her hugely successful “Brat summer” and the often-unforeseen pressures that accompany global recognition.
Speaking to The Associated Press the day after its debut, Charli XCX, 33, explained her motivation. “I was just really interested in telling this story about expectation,” she said.
Having navigated the music industry since the age of 16, her career trajectory has been anything but linear. However, 2024 marked a significant turning point with her sixth studio album, Brat, which rapidly became a cultural phenomenon. For a brief period, she felt truly understood, but this quickly shifted.
“There was this sort of, kind of, you know, persona that people really associated me with and then there were a lot of expectations put on me as a person, as an artist, of who I was then supposed to be. And I didn’t fit into that sort of narrative,” she reflected. “
I had got to this place where I was finally feeling so understood. Then I was like not understood again.” This tension, the existential conundrum of creating something immensely popular only for it to become a double-edged sword, became the core of her new project.
A traditional documentary felt inadequate for exploring such nuanced themes, leading Charli XCX and 30-year-old Scottish photographer and music video director Aidan Zamiri to craft something more authentic to their vision.
The Moment is described as a blend of This is Spinal Tap and Black Swan, infused with meta-elements and featuring cameos from figures like Kylie Jenner and Rachel Sennott playing themselves. It’s a heightened reality, yet deeply rooted in truth. “I won’t lie, there are definitely some crossovers,” Charli XCX admitted. “I haven’t made the choices that Charli in the film makes, but I’ve definitely, like, come close to it. … It was a very accurate depiction of what I’ve experienced in the music industry.”
The A24 film, one of the most anticipated titles at Sundance, is set for a swift theatrical release, opening in New York and Los Angeles on 30 January before expanding nationwide on 6 February. In the film, Charli XCX faces immense pressure as “Brat summer” concludes. She’s tasked with staging a concert film for Amazon, working with a “sleazy director not of her choosing” played by Alexander Skarsgård, promoting a “Brat credit card,” and conforming to the demands of music executives. The narrative sees her increasingly frazzled and sleep-deprived.
Zamiri, who previously directed her “360” music video and has become a close friend, embraced the challenge of directing his first feature film, understanding the intrinsic pressures Charli XCX was experiencing.
“It’s this battle of expectations and of people wanting one thing from you and you feeling this pressure too, to stick with it, to keep providing that one thing for fear that maybe that attention, that excitement about you will falter if the next thing they don’t love,” Zamiri explained. He added, “I love the process of making stuff. But part of it, which is often really exciting but also weird, is the sharing with the world because then it’s just no longer yours anymore … it becomes its own thing which I think we saw happen in real-time with Brat.”
Just as with her Brat album, Charli XCX has been intimately involved in the marketing and promotion of The Moment.
“I love marketing, I really do,” she stated. “I think there’s an interesting gap in film between the vision of the filmmaker and the marketing. It’s been really cool working with A24, who are definitely determined to bridge that gap. I mean, like, come on, with Marty Supreme, for instance? It was so well done.” Despite the challenges, her favourite part remains the creative process, making a film about it particularly rewarding, “even when I’m being an absolute crazy (expletive).”
A palpable energy surrounds The Moment as its theatrical release approaches. Charli XCX ensured that some fans, not just industry insiders, were able to attend the premiere, with many celebrating into the early hours at a DJ’d party afterwards. Zamiri noted: “I love all the fans wanting to roll up with their sunglasses on and their crop tops. I get the feeling they’ll show up for this like they would for a concert. That’s the coolest thing ever.”
Sundance proved to be something of an unofficial coronation for Charli XCX as an actor, with three films featuring her across the opening weekend.
Beyond The Moment, she appeared in Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex as an uptight girlfriend and in Cathy Yan’s The Gallerist as an art-world influencer. These roles, while not her first on-screen credits, showcase her range and ability to carry a film, even when playing a version of herself.
For Charli XCX, a self-professed cinephile with a public Letterboxd account logging 1,357 movies (her review of Paddington 2 simply stated “lives up 2 the hype,” and her top four include Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread and David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars), this deep dive into filmmaking has been profoundly personal. She also created a companion concept album for Emerald Fennell’s upcoming Wuthering Heights.
Being so fully immersed in the film industry, she said, “has been like everything and more.” Her ambition is clear: “I really am sort of like desperate to like learn more and more and more about, you know, about every part of the film industry: Making a film, being in film. I’m so hungry. I feel so incredibly lucky that I’ve been a part of the films that I have been part of thus far. I mean, like, to work with Aidan? To work with Gregg Araki? To do a (expletive) scene with like Natalie Portman? I’m like what the (expletive)?”
