Charli xcx plays herself in “The Moment,” a meta mockumentary about the challenges of fame. She tells The Associated Press she wanted to explore expectations. The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival before it opens in theaters on Jan. 30. Charli, a pop star since 16, hit a peak with her sixth album, “Brat,” in 2024.
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Anti-doomscrolling influencersThe trends at Paris Fashion Week are statement coats, even bigger shoulders and sharp tailoringDeslave en isla indonesia de Java causa al menos ocho muertos y más de 80 desaparecidosEntertainmentCharli xcx attends the premiere of “The Moment” during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Director Aidan Zamiri, left, and Charli xcx attend the premiere of “The Moment” during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Charli xcx attends the premiere of “The Gallerist” during the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Charli xcx appears in a scene from “The Moment,” an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Charli xcx attends the premiere of “The Moment” during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Charli xcx officially brought “Brat summer” to the snowy peaks of the Sundance Film Festival on Friday with the premiere of her highly anticipated mockumentary, “The Moment.” Charli xcx attends the premiere of “The Moment” during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Charli xcx attends the premiere of “The Moment” during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Director Aidan Zamiri, left, and Charli xcx attend the premiere of “The Moment” during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Director Aidan Zamiri, left, and Charli xcx attend the premiere of “The Moment” during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Charli xcx attends the premiere of “The Gallerist” during the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Charli xcx attends the premiere of “The Gallerist” during the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Charli xcx appears in a scene from “The Moment,” an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Charli xcx appears in a scene from “The Moment,” an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Charli xcx attends the premiere of “The Moment” during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Charli xcx attends the premiere of “The Moment” during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, at Eccles Center in Park City, Utah. Charli xcx officially brought “Brat summer” to the snowy peaks of the Sundance Film Festival on Friday with the premiere of her highly anticipated mockumentary, “The Moment.” “I was just really interested in telling this story about expectation,” Charli xcx told The Associated Press the day after “The Moment” debuted at theThe 33-year-old pop star from Essex has been in the music industry since she was 16, with a career trajectory that she described as anything but straight forward. Then, in 2024, it hit a crescendo with herwhich became a pop culture phenomenon. Finally, she said, she felt understood for a moment. And then, just as quickly, it changed. “There was this sort of, kind of, you know, persona that people really associated me with and then there were a lot of expectations put on me as a person, as an artist, of who I was then supposed to be. And I didn’t fit into that sort of narrative,” she said. “I had got to this place where I was finally feeling so understood. Then I was like not understood again.” Making something immensely popular and resonant can be a double-edged sword for an artist working in a business that would sometimes rather milk the “sure thing” forever than let someone evolve and move on. She found herself wanting to grapple with that tension, that existential conundrum that she’d experienced.A straightforward documentary didn’t seem like right approach, so she and Aidan Zamiri, the 30-year-old Scottish photographer and music video director, got to work on something else, something that felt truer to them. “The Moment” is a little “This is Spinal Tap,” a little “Black Swan,” a little meta, with the likes of“I won’t lie, there are definitely some crossovers,” she said. “I haven’t made the choices that Charli in the film makes, but I’ve definitely, like, come close to it. … It was a very accurate depiction of what I’ve experienced in the music industry.” One of the buzziest titles in a starry program, the A24 film will be in theaters faster than most: It opens in New York and Los Angeles on Jan. 30 and expands wide on Feb. 6. Charli xcx officially brought “Brat summer” to the snowy peaks of the Sundance Film Festival on Friday with the premiere of her highly anticipated mockumentary, “The Moment.” In “The Moment,” Charli xcx is under pressure as Brat summer comes to an end, having to stage a concert film with Amazon, with a sleazy director not of her choosing played by Alexander Skarsgård, promote a Brat credit card, and fall in line with what music executives want from her. She’s also not sleeping and getting increasingly frazzled about everything. Zamiri, who directed her “360” music video and has become one of her best friends, was excited by the challenge and to direct his first feature film. He also understood intrinsically what she was going through. “It’s this battle of expectations and of people wanting one thing from you and you feeling this pressure too, to stick with it, to keep providing that one thing for fear that maybe that attention, that excitement about you will falter if the next thing they don’t love,” Zamiri said. “I love the process of making stuff. But part of it, which is often really exciting but also weird, is the sharing with the world because then it’s just no longer yours anymore … it becomes its own thing which I think we saw happen in real-time with Brat.” Director Aidan Zamiri, left, and Charli xcx attend the premiere of “The Moment.” As with the “Brat” album and everything she does, Charli xcx has been intimately involved in the marketing and promotion of the movie too. “I love marketing, I really do,” she said. “I think there’s an interesting gap in film between the vision of the filmmaker and the marketing. It’s been really cool working with A24, who are definitely determined to bridge that gap. I mean like, come on, withHer favorite part, though, is always the creative process, so to have made a film about just that was especially rewarding, she said, “even when I’m being an absolute crazy .”There’s a palpable energy around “The Moment” as it approaches its theatrical release. Charli xcx made sure that some fans actually got into the premiere, not just industry folks and those who could afford expensive festival passes. Afterward many celebrated into the wee hours of the morning at a DJ’d party. “I love all the fans wanting to roll up with their sunglasses on and their crop tops,” Zamiri said. “I get the feeling they’ll show up for this like they would for a concert. That’s the coolest thing ever.”The Sundance Film Festival was a kind of coronation for Charli xcx, the actor, with three films across the first weekend, including Gregg Araki’s “I Want Your Sex,” where she played the uptight girlfriend of Cooper Hoffman’s character, and Cathy Yan’s “The Gallerist,” as an art world influencer type with bleached eyebrows. They’re not her first on screen credits, but they do show her range in addition to her ability to carry a film, even if she’s playing a version of herself. It’s a big moment for Charli xcx personally, too. She’s a self-professed cinephile with a not-so-secret Letterboxd account, where she’s logged 1,357 movies so far. In a recent review of “Paddington 2,” she wrote “lives up 2 the hype.” Her four favorites are Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread,” David Cronenberg’s “Maps to the Stars,” Jacques Rivette’s “Céline and Julie Go Boating” and Abel Ferrera’s “The Addiction.” To now be so fully entrenched in the filmmaking industry, she said, “has been like everything and more.” She also did a companion concept album for Emerald Fennell’s upcoming “Wuthering Heights.” “I really am sort of like desperate to like learn more and more and more about, you know, about every part of the film industry: Making a film, being in film. I’m so hungry,” she said. “I feel so incredibly lucky that I’ve been a part of the films that I have been part of thus far. I mean, like, to work with Aidan? To work with Gregg Araki? To do a scene with like Natalie Portman? I’m like what the ?”
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