Realistically, Brat Summer could live forever — but in the new trailer for Aidan Zamiri’s The Moment, Charli XCX doesn’t know if that’s what she even wants. The latest look into the film, which will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, finds the artist grappling with how her latest album snowballed so quickly into a vessel for commercialized and overexposed marketing.
“Don’t you just think the whole like, keep having a Brat Summer thing is a bit cringe?” Charli asks Tim (Jaime Demetriou), a manager whose casting summary described him as a bad listener who “tries to weigh in on big decisions and assert himself but often seems out of his depth.” This scene is a perfect example. Seemingly ignorant to the subtle distress in Charli’s tone, he responds, “It’s all cringe. Good to go again?”
There’s a sense that Charli, in this semi-fictionalized world of pop stardom, didn’t plan this far ahead. “Everybody’s so desperate for me to be fucking innovative all the time and fucking cool,” she cries out in one scene. “Everybody’s like, what do you want? What do you want? Well, I don’t fucking know what I fucking want, Tim.”
Charli doesn’t pretend to know what her next move is, but there are plenty of people in her ear telling her what they think it should be. “Label’s like more Brat, Brat forever,” she says. “And you know what? Maybe they’re right.” But maybe they aren’t. When Amazon agrees to fund a concert film capturing the Brat tour, a big-shot director (Alexander Skarsgård) is brought in who warns Charli not to “offend anyone” with her show. “Some of these elements will probably turn people off,” he tells her.
The director’s concern is juxtaposed with another scene that finds an executive interrupting a fan telling Charli that her music saved his life. “Hold up the card,” the exec says, pushing for more promo of a Brat credit card. When Rachel Sennott sees the card, she admits, “I thought this was literally a joke.” Kylie Jenner shows up later in the trailer with her own bit of advice. “The second people are getting sick of you,” she says, “that’s when you have to go even harder.”
The Moment also stars Rosanna Arquette, Hailey Benton Gates, Kate Berlant, and Isaac Powell. A24 will release the film in theaters on Jan. 30, 2026.
