The Moment: Club classics yes, film classic no

• Reviewed from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival

Charli xcx’s movie blitz (2025’s Erupcja, Gregg Araki’s upcoming film I Want Your Sex, etc.) continues with the pop star playing a version of herself prepping for a tour and negotiating the pressures of professionalised celebrity. Billed as a mockumentary, this music-biz chronicle never finds its footing, caught between essentially workplace humor around a buzzy director (Alexander Skarsgård) brought in to shoot the tour, and the tedious obligations of maintaining her independence and brand.

To brat or not to brat is the career dilemma in the film: how to follow the massive success of Brat summer? More of the same club-friendly output, something yet to be discovered, or the streamlined product proposed by a director (Skarsgård) courting broader audiences and backed up by her label and Amazon backers (“the suits” per music-biz story convention)? Charli’s inner circle can’t quite rally around her, either because they’re on board with the agenda (her manager) or they’re getting pushed out (her friend and tour designer Celeste, played by Hailey Benton Gates).

The Moment’s director Aidan Zamiri, a young music-video maven making his feature debut, has trouble launching the conflict or its comedic bits. It coasts on the vague frisson of Charli on the go, alternately working out her next move from the back of a car and wanting to flee the anxiety, as she does suddenly with a sponsored trip to Ibiza that puts her face to face with a frenemy (Kylie Jenner). 

Shot in moodily saturated interiors, goosed by formulaic abrasive transitions, the film can fizz with the passive-aggressive frustrations of a star and her team working around one another (though Jamie Demetriou as the manager is not quite in the Armando Iannucci universe he may have signed up for). Skarsgård commits fully to Johannes as a lame but insidious corporate auteur, who softens Charli’s full-on aesthetic with tour visuals that are easier to film and friendlier to audiences beyond her usual fans, boxing out Celeste (Gates) in the process.

Celeste’s bitter ejection and Charli’s anomie nearly suggest that The Moment was originally a personal drama now retrofitted with mockumentary setpieces. The singer’s verve as a performer in rehearsal sequences is undeniable, and the film is kitted out with an impressive cast (Rachel Sennott, Kate Berlant), but by the time the plot contrives a disastrous Brat-themed bank card promotion, its pretensions to either clever comedy or artistic reflection are lost in the lights.

► The Moment is in cinemas 20 February.