It was a “Brat” Berlinale on Saturday as music superstar Charli xcx landed in the German capital to talk about her mockumentary The Moment with director Aidan Zamiri.
The pair came together for the film’s press conference ahead of its international premiere Saturday night, the room overflowing with journalists keen to get a glimpse of the Grammy-winning Brit.
The Moment, which had its world premiere at Sundance last month, follows the highs and lows of a popstar’s rise to global fame. Alexander Skarsgård, Rosanna Arquette, Hailey Benton Gates, Jamie Demetriou, Rachel Sennott, Kate Berlant, Rish Shah and Kylie Jenner all star.
Charli kicked off the presser by discussing how emotional and difficult the “Brat” era was for her. “When you release art into the world, and it reaches a wide audience, and in my case, this was the widest audience I ever reached,” she said about the wildly popular album, “the work begins to sort of morph and change in its meaning. And obviously that’s just what comes with releasing art, period. But I’d never experienced it at the scale before, and it left me sort of thinking a lot about how we communicate art, at what point art leaves your own hands and goes into the audience’s hands, how that makes you feel as a creator.”
“I also think I am quite an emotional and volatile artist,” she confessed, “as I think many artists are. And I found elements of that journey quite difficult. I just felt that making this film, in a way, was a way of me not only commenting on art and the longevity, [the] lifespan of art, but also dealing with my experience, my very personal experience as an artist, and how I felt in the industry in the music industry.”
The singer also joked about going “method” and the inspiration behind some of the situations audiences will see in The Moment: “I think I have definitely come close to those circumstances, especially having been in the music industry for so long. I’ve definitely met versions of characters that we touch on within the film, and I’ve definitely reacted in ways close to the way that I react to the film,” she laughed. “You know, have I had a breakdown in the back of a [Mercedes] Viano whilst smoking a million cigarettes? Yes. I definitely had a lot to draw on, let’s say, but… I think I am nicer!”
Scottish filmmaker Zamiri was asked about casting Jenner and called her the Kardashian sister an “incredible actor.” He said: “I couldn’t believe that Kylie was down to do this… What’s interesting is that we were able to play with these real-world elements of culture.” He added: “So it was really helpful to have these almost signposts, the things that we as an audience understand, and whether that be Kylie or Rachel [Sennott’s] cameos or other elements.”
Later in the presser, Charli was asked: Is “Brat” officially over? “Making this film was quite cathartic, in a way, because I was also able to channel a lot of my frustration that I may have felt in the real world into these heightened scenarios that I was experiencing within… For me, it’s over.”
She finished off by lauding the Berlin Film Festival in particular for “not shying away from political films, from films that have a real social angle, from films by directors who really are visionary and have something to say, and I think for me as a producer, as an actor, for Aidan, as a director… Those are the kinds of films that we love. Those are the films that we want to champion ourselves, and I feel like I’m only just starting out.”
It’s been a decidedly apolitical Berlin with jury president Wim Wenders, Golden Bear recipient Michelle Yeoh, and Sunny Dancer star Neil Patrick Harris all refusing to talk politics so far, to the disapproval of European journalists and, it seems, social media users keeping tags on the headlines coming out of the fest this week. Acclaimed Indian author Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things) even pulled out of the fest entirely on Friday in response to Wenders‘ comments that filmmakers “have to stay out of politics.”
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