Aidan Zamiri’s mockumentary The Moment transports audiences back to the waning days of Brat Summer. Charli XCX, playing a lightly fictionalized version of herself, is caught in an omnidirectional game of tug of war as social media managers, corporate sponsors, agents, and a harebrained Swedish director try to milk “brat” for all it’s worth in the form of a concert movie. Perhaps needless to say, it’s so confusing for the hyper-pop star.

As Charli tweaks the final leg of her Brat tour with her creative director and closest confidant, Celeste (Hailey Gates), a series of corporate decisions upend what should be a victory lap. A brat-themed credit card becomes a legal minefield, and just as Charli and Celeste are ready to give the final seal of approval to the audiovisual programming for the last few shows, which the concert film will document, an enigmatic director, Johannes (Alexander Skarsgård), steps in with designs to change everything about the show. Convinced that taking the Brat tour in a more family-friendly direction would increase sales, Johannes sanitizes everything about Charli’s irreverent identity, to the befuddlement and, eventually, horror of Celeste.

Zamiri, a longtime collaborator of Charli XCX, brings a hyper-pop sensibility to The Moment with abrasive strobe effects, flashing brand and title cards, and hazy, multicolored cinematic textures courtesy of cinematographer Sean Price Williams. Neal Farmer and Billy Sneddon’s fast-paced cutting, particularly in the sequences where Charli’s entourage barrages her with questions and tasks, comes to feel like a mirror of the noise inside the singer’s head.

While the various throwaway lines and subtle reaction shots in these sequences are entertaining, The Moment is bound to test your patience. Courting our fatigue may be part of the film’s design. After all, The Moment, like Charli XCX’s Brat itself, is about chasing a high. But considering how Celeste’s concert design, which more closely resembles Zamiri’s abrasive strobe-heavy sensibility, is presented in the narrative as the sacrificial lamb to Johanne’s PG-rated one, it’s doubtful that the film actually intends for us to grow tired of its sensory overload.

That wouldn’t be a deal-breaker if the story—corporate forces compromise an artist’s vision, stressing her out and causing her to burn all sorts bridges—felt substantial enough to support the 103-minute runtime. The who’s-who cast of the media world, from comedians to bona fide superstars, points to The Moment’s interest in placing vibes above storytelling, which also wouldn’t be a problem if the film weren’t scattered with little moments that break the diegesis of its documentary approach. (One montage shows various teenagers across the globe seeing a social media post pop up on their phones the moment it goes live, which may have you wondering how cameras were stationed in all these locations in the first place.)

The Moment begins as a satire, but after a while it attempts to evolve into something much more earnest, with Charli opening up about the insecurity and vulnerability that sparked “brat” and all that it cost her. In this moment, it’s hard to doubt the sincerity of her introspection, but one gets the sense that Zamiri’s film is trying have its cake and eat it too.

Nowhere is this incompatibility more apparent than in The Moment’s final stretch, where we see the product of Johannes’s vision: a concert devoid of Charli’s signature British debauchery. Underscored by an ironic “Bittersweet Symphony” needle drop, this sequence attempts to take shots at all the cloying aspects of something like a Taylor Swift concert film. But as it functions as a kind of punchline to Charli hitting rock bottom, it creates a tonal whiplash that only reinforces that farce and sincerity make more odd bedfellows across the film.

Score: 

 Cast: Charli xcx, Alexander Skarsgård, Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Gates, Arielle Dombasle, Kylie Jenner  Director: Aidan Zamiri  Screenwriter: Aidan Zamiri, Bertie Brandes  Distributor: A24  Running Time: 103 min  Rating: R  Year: 2026  Venue: Sundance Film Festival
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