A24’s Brat Summer mockumentary turns Charli XCX’s own arena tour into satire, and the trailer already has her going after her own catchphrase.
I’ll admit I went in skeptical. A pop star playing a fictionalized version of herself, in a movie she also dreamed up, is a premise that could go very wrong very fast. Then the trailer opens with Charli turning to the camera and asking if you’re having a Brat Summer, before immediately deciding out loud that the whole phrase is a little cringe now. Okay. She gets it. I’m in.
The Moment is director Aidan Zamiri’s feature debut, built from an idea Charli xcx brought to him herself. Zamiri’s not new to her world, though — he directed her “360” video, plus videos for Billie Eilish, FKA twigs, and Yung Lean, so he knows how to shoot her. The official logline is about as meta as it gets: a rising pop star navigating fame and industry pressure while gearing up for her first arena tour. Which is, functionally, Charli’s actual last two years, pushed into a much stranger, darker register. She’s called the version of herself in this film her “Hell version,” and the trailer backs that up.
It’s Mockumentary, and It’s Not Subtle About the Bit
The format lets Zamiri cut between fly-on-the-wall concert footage and fully scripted scenes, and the trailer bounces between both without much warning. At one point, Charli’s team preps her to climb inside a massive flaming lighter as a stage gimmick, which is somehow one of the more restrained moments.
The Supporting Cast Is Doing a Lot of Work
Rosanna Arquette plays a record label exec trying to keep Brat Summer going forever, which is a very specific kind of villain. Alexander Skarsgård is the director hired to make her concert film. Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Rachel Sennott, Hailey Benton Gates, and Isaac Powell round out the handlers and hangers-on, and Kylie Jenner shows up playing herself.
A.G. Cook, who’s produced a chunk of Charli’s catalog, wrote the score, so at minimum this is going to sound right.
Do You Need to Care About Brat to Watch This?
I don’t think so. Underneath the Brat jokes, this looks like it’s really about having to keep performing your own cultural moment on command, which is a much bigger and stranger subject than one album cycle. It’s got a little Spinal Tap in it, a little The Idol, but funnier and, from the trailer alone, considerably more self-aware.
The Moment premieres at Sundance 2026 before opening in theaters on January 30, 2026.




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