The film The Moment, co-created by musician-turned-producer Charli xcx, arrived at the Berlinale as part of the Panorama programme following its premiere at Sundance. The project, directed by Aidan Zamiri from a screenplay written with Bertie Brandes, places a rising pop artist at the center of a story about ambition, performance and the machinery of fame. At a Festival press event in Berlin, Charli clarified that the episodes onscreen are fictionalized—even if some scenes draw on emotions and brushes with industry pressures she knows well.
Berlin’s festival environment—known for embracing politically aware and socially resonant work—offered a context that both producers and cast said suited the film’s tone. The Moment is produced under Charli’s Studio365 imprint with David Hinojosa and lists Brandon Creed, Mikey Schwartz-Wright and Zach Nutman among its executive producers. Distributor A24 has reported notably brisk sales for the film’s limited release run.
From idea to screen: creative origins and collaborators
The Moment began life as an original idea from Charli xcx, developed into a screenplay by Zamiri and Brandes. The narrative follows an artist preparing for an arena tour while negotiating public image, private strain and the eccentric personalities surrounding contemporary pop culture. In describing the film’s genesis during Berlinale, Charli emphasized collaboration: the script grew from shared conversations about celebrity, aesthetic spectacle and the line between authenticity and performance.
The ensemble and key contributors
The cast assembles familiar faces from social media, indie comedy and mainstream film: Kylie Jenner, Rachel Sennott, Kate Berlant, Alexander Skarsgård, Rosanna Arquette, Jamie Demetriou and others appear in roles that populate the protagonist’s orbit. On the creative side, production designer Francesca Di Mottola (credited on Berlinale panels in connection with The Moment) contributed to the film’s look, helping to shape the environments where persona and reality intersect. Charli also highlighted the role of producers in shepherding a music-inflected film into the festival circuit.
Fiction, autobiography and the art of borrowing
At the press gathering, Charli xcx made a point of explaining the relationship between on-screen events and her own career. She insisted the plot points are not literal retellings of specific incidents. Yet she acknowledged that a career in music provides emotional and situational material that can be refracted into fiction. In conversation she described moments that felt close to the film’s scenes—stresses on the road, encounters with industry archetypes and emotional breakdowns—all reframed for cinematic effect.
Method, memory and mythmaking
When asked about performance approach, Charli joked about a lifetime of preparation, then moved to a more serious point: fictional storytelling allows creators to compress and intensify experience. The film intentionally plays with this compression. It creates a playful, sometimes unsettling mirror in which celebrity rituals and personal collapse coexist. That tonal balancing act—part satire, part drama—was a recurring theme in both the press session and a Berlinale Talents talk featuring director Aidan Zamiri later in the festival.
Why festivals: strategy and fit
The Moment’s path through Sundance to Berlin reflects deliberate programming choices. Charli said she and her producing partners wanted the film to debut at festivals that celebrate diverse voices and risk-taking filmmakers. She praised Sundance and Berlinale as institutions that showcase both visionary directors and socially engaged narratives, arguing that those contexts are valuable for a film that interrogates pop culture while retaining a personal, character-driven core.
Berlin’s Panorama section, where The Moment screened, is known for spotlighting works that explore identity, politics and social tensions. The city’s festival offerings complement the film’s interrogation of public spectacle; for the team behind The Moment, Berlin’s audience represents an informed platform where the film’s themes could be debated and appreciated.
Events around the film at berlinale
Beyond the screening, Berlinale scheduled a series of talks and Talents workshops that intersected with The Moment’s production elements. On February 14 at Radialsystem, a Berlinale Talents session titled “The Moment: Aidan Zamiri on Chaos, Brat and Creative Discomfort” offered attendees a deeper look at Zamiri’s longstanding partnership with Charli xcx and how that collaboration shaped the film’s aesthetic. Earlier that day, a panel on production design featured Francesca Di Mottola, who discussed the process of translating high-concept stagecraft and tour production into filmic spaces.
These programmed conversations form part of Berlinale’s wider hub of talks, where filmmakers, critics and audiences engage on themes ranging from music in film to film heritage and preservation. The festival runs through February 22, and The Moment’s presence—both on screen and in panels—added a pop-music inflected entry to an otherwise diverse programme.
For Charli xcx and her collaborators, the Berlinale screenings and talks provided the kinds of conversations and scrutiny that suit a film operating at the intersection of music, image and narrative.