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Last year, Charli XCX had just become one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, and she was already ready for a new chapter in movies. Onstage for her Coachella set in April, the singer-songwriter announced the climax to her widely celebrated “Brat Summer” tour by dancing in front of a screen that announced a parade of other artists who deserved seasons of their own.
Aside from fellow musicians (“A$AP Rocky Summer,” “Lourde Summer”), the list featured a number of acclaimed filmmakers, including Celine Song (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Joaquim Trier (Sentimental Value), Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)…and Sean Price Williams, a veteran cinematographer who has only directed a single low-budget movie to date (the anarchic road-trip comedy The Sweet East).
As it turned out, Charli XCX was acknowledging one of the collaborators involved in her next move. Williams (whose earlier credits include everything the Safdie brothers did prior to Uncut Gems) was already in the midst of collaborating with Charli XCX on what would become one of her first starring roles. In The Moment (directed by Aidan Zamiri and shot by Williams), the 33-year-old British singer-songwriter stars in a fictionalized version of herself in the midst of the “Brat Summer” phenomena. As the imagery associated with the lime-green album goes viral, Charli contends with the wave of new expectations thrust upon her and struggles with the danger of selling out.
The real Charli spent Brat Summer doing anything but. In the midst of her massive 2024 tour, she snuck off to Poland to act in her first starring role, the slender character study Erupcja. Directed by Pete Ohs, an indie filmmaker known for churning out small-scale movies on shoestring budgets, Erupcja features Charli XCX as Bethany, a conflicted young woman who gets stuck on a vacation in Warsaw with her boyfriend after a volcano in Italy disrupts their travel. Grappling with whether she wants to remain with her partner even as he plots a proposal, Charli’s character anchors a smart and sturdy relationship drama while functioning as a kind of counterweight to the conflicted celebrity of The Moment. These very different movies illustrate the capacity of a performer with genuine range. Erupjca proves Charli XCX can play other people. With The Moment, she’s playing an exaggerated version of herself.
On the surface, the movie toys with the tropes of the classic music-themed mockumentary, a tradition that goes back to 1984’s This is Spinal Tap (one clever user on Letterboxd, the social media site for film lovers that Charli XCX is known to frequent, dubbed the new movie “This is Spinal Brat”). But The Moment doubles as a mission statement from a creator intent on evading expectations. The Charli of the movie wrestles with the disgust of a “Brat Summer”-themed credit card (“Isn’t it fucking lame?”) while tolerating the advice of various business advisers who surround her (“This could be our way of keeping Brat fresh until, well, next summer,” says one). It illustrates a jolting contrast between her noisy public life (endless rehearsals, phony interactions with fans), and a rather lonely private one (gazing out from her hotel balcony while a late-night interview plays on the TV). The more time you spend in public, The Moment argues, the more it comes to define who you are.
Which is why the real Charli XCX continues to evade precise definitions. The Moment was one of several movies to feature her at the recent Sundance Film Festival. In the raunchy comedy I Want Your Sex, Charli XCX appears in a supporting role as the puritanical girlfriend of a neurotic artist assistant who falls in love with his abusive boss (Olivia Wilde). She also appeared in another art-world spoof, The Gallerist (which I did not see).
Meanwhile, she has supplied the soundtrack for two upcoming 2026 releases, the Valentine’s Day release Wuthering Heights and the romantic fashion musical Mother Mary. Anyone who thought they had a grasp on the essence of Charli XCX’s fame and abilities will have to wait and see how they continue to evolve. The Moment is loaded with cringe-inducing jokes about the music industry’s tendency to homogenize its talent, while asserting that she’s just getting started.
This type of pivot has a unique effect. Celebrities willing to comment on their own image, and push beyond the boundaries of their vocations, generate more intrigue as a result. “The second people are sick of you, you have to go even harder,” says Kylie Jenner in a cameo scene from The Moment, one of several that double as Charli XCX reflecting on the performative nature of fame.
But the tradition of self-referential performance extends back to a much earlier era. “I do think there’s something Warholian about it,” the playwright Jeremy Harris, a friend of Charli XCX who co-stars with her in Eurpjca, told me by phone this week. “Her curiosity mixed with her ambition is a really powerful force, one that I think will evolve into a type of pop star that we haven’t really seen.”
He caught himself. “Actually, we have seen it,” he said, “but mainly in people like David Bowie, these hyper-iconic people who were in the mainstream at the beginning of their careers. We’ve very rarely seen someone bring not only their personal curiosity but the curiosity of the community around them into their own projects.”
Rather than simply letting a camera trail her around, Charli XCX is letting the mystique of the movies further enrich her identity. The Moment hails less from the tradition of This is Spinal Tap than I’m Still Here, the 2010 movie that presented itself as a behind-the-scenes look at Joaquin Phoenix’s attempt to become a rap star and turned out to be a prank on the public. The Moment acknowledges that precedent in an early scene, when Charli runs into comedian and social media star Rachel Sennott, who notices the camera and asks, “Are you doing a Joaquin Phoenix thing?”
The real answer is yes — and no. Charli XCX is doing her own thing, commenting on her progress to date while venturing off in directions that remain to be seen, but are certainly worthy of anticipation. As her onscreen persona in The Moment develops her concert, a controlling stage director inserts himself into the equation by stating, “We don’t want to alienate the audience.” So far though, the real Charli XCX has managed the opposite effect.