An hour with… Aidan Zamiri

Filmmaker Aidan Zamiri is known for being a little meta. Take the music video he directed for Charli xcx’s 360, in which an array of “internet hot girls” from Chloë Sevigny to Rachel Sennott search for their successor. (Spoiler: it’s Charli.) Or the recent rollout for Marty Supreme, during which Zamiri’s collaborator Timothée Chalamet “leaked” a Zoom call of himself pitching mad stunts to the film’s marketing team. Zamiri often winks at fame from behind the camera, satirising modern celebrity in the very act of reconstructing it. So he’s found it surreal, lately, to find himself on the other side of the lens.

“The amount I’ve had to look at myself recently has been unhinged,” Zamiri says, slumped behind a table at a north London pub, dressed in gorpcore (66 North jacket, carpenter trousers) and a T-shirt emblazoned with IT’S ALL CRINGE. He’s recently got back from the LA premiere of his feature-length directorial debut The Moment, and is starting a busy fortnight of promo. “Promoting the film is the first time I’ve ever felt observed as a person,” he grimaces. “I don’t think anyone should ever think about themselves that much.”

You might not have thought much about Zamiri, but you’ll know his work: ads for Balenciaga, videos for Billie Eilish, FKA Twigs and Raye. Interview magazine credits him with “making the music video essential again”. The Guardian, commenting on his ability to create spectacles that soak up attention in an age famously short of it, has dubbed him a “zeitgeist savant”. It’s a talent that has the young director extremely in demand.

All of which makes The Moment, a product of his ongoing collaboration with popstar Charli xcx, more interesting. Zamiri directed music videos for 360 and Guess from xcx’s 2024 album Brat, which became an inescapable cultural phenomenon two years ago. Set at the end of that “brat summer”, The Moment is a mockumentary about the making of a documentary about the brat tour. Like I said, meta.

“Charli was getting a lot of offers to do something more conventional, like a concert film,” Zamiri explains, playing with his braid over a Diet Coke. “But it didn’t feel like a new way to explore a medium – and that’s what we’re both really interested in.”

The Moment blends real footage from tour rehearsals with scripted scenes, co-written by Zamiri and Bertie Brandes. Xcx plays herself, or a version of it (that ambiguity is the point), but aside from a few cameos – including a very game Kylie Jenner – the rest of the cast are played by actors. The result is a strange and unsettling comedy, with no clear lines between reality and fiction, and between those in on the joke and its target.

For Zamiri, that makes the film a truer representation of fame in the social media era than a straight documentary could be. “I remember when we were constructing the story of this film, there was so much that I found to be surreal. Like, Nato doing a brat post was so crazy to me,” Zamiri says. “Watching this unfold in real time felt fictional, you know?”

Zamiri grew up outside Glasgow, born to an Iranian mother and a Scottish father. He studied graphic design at Central Saint Martins, where he began experimenting with photography and short film. Even so, his passion was always music. He shows me a tattoo of a Britney Spears lyric, which he gave himself in uni. “Testament to a graphic design degree, I guess!”

At CSM, a friend asked Zamiri to photograph their graduate portfolio. Someone at Nike saw it, and commissioned him to shoot a campaign. That led to work with Off-White and Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe, and editorials for fashion magazines like i-D. One early gig, shooting a behind-the-scenes film for Victoria Beckham, provided his first real brush with fame. “I was observing this version of life that I’d never seen before. You realise, ‘Wow, there’s such an interesting apparatus around this.’”

Zamiri’s first collaboration with xcx was an ad for Zalando – fitting, given a theme of Zamiri’s work is the fraught relationship between art and commerce in an era when artists are reeling from declining incomes in the streaming era. “There’s no money in music videos,” he laughs. “It’s actually anti-money.”

That tension is at the heart of The Moment, which turns dramatically on a particularly on-the-nose brand partnership gone awry. At the same time, the film includes its own knowingly overt product placement for brands like Aperol. He credits that meta humour to the influence of the documentary maker Adam Curtis, who advised on an early cut of the film. “It’s almost an exercise in curating bits of culture to make a comment on it.”

A cynic can spot themes running through the marketing for Brat, The Moment and Marty Supreme. A bright colour that stands out in the feed (acid green, orange). “Spontaneous” fan meets. Covetable merch. By targeting younger, hardcore fans – the kind who will queue for hours to buy a £250 Marty Supreme jacket before they’ve even seen the film, for cultural clout – you build enough noise that everyone else has to take notice. But Zamiri says he never starts a project with virality in mind. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought, ‘That will do numbers,’” he says. “The main thought is ‘What’s funny, or weird, or refreshing in this context?’”

It makes sense that a director who broke through in music is so effective in the vertical video era. In many ways, MTV was the feed before the feed existed, and the genre relies on similar skills: grabbing attention quickly, building mythology, burning images into the visual memory. When modern promotion cycles often feel like a series of obligations – late-night appearance, SNL, the inevitable poultry-based YouTube interview – Zamiri’s work feels subversive. “There’s something exciting about finding we had authorship,” he says.

Zamiri met Chalamet in 2024, while shooting a cover for Rolling Stone. “I find Timothée extremely inspiring. Talk about being locked in.” In interviews, xcx has stated that her brat persona is not her true self; similarly, Chalamet’s Marty Supreme stunts led many fans to speculate that the actor was still in character. “In any project I do, I’m trying to be like, ‘How does this medium, this format, this thing we’re doing, serve the intention we’re trying to get across?’” Zamiri says. “Whether that is Timmy having ping pong balls fired at him in a tank, or whatever, we’re like: cool – what’s this in service of?”

That, of course, requires sign-off from the client. Both the Zoom stunt and The Moment are brutal about the pitfalls of creativity by committee. How does Zamiri resist those forces? “I am just extremely reasonable,” he says. “I will go, ‘Here’s my professional advice on what I think is cool, but it’s up to you whether you want to take this advice.’”

In the final act of The Moment, xcx’s character breaks down, revealing the toll of constantly performing. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to get approval,” xcx sobs. It’s a revealing moment. Or is it? Although xcx is playing herself, it’s notable that the film omits any details from her personal life. But the vulnerability at least, Zamiri says, is grounded in truth. “Me and Charli’s work together is often dripping with irony, but we knew for this that felt important,” Zamiri says. “If we’re going to do something that requires this much attention from people, and requires people to engage with it in this way, then you want to say something that feels honest.”

In January, after winning Best Actor at the SAG awards, Chalamet caused a stir with his acceptance speech, in which he declared his intention to be “one of the greats”. Such naked ambition felt jarring, when cool is so often defined by ironic detachment. “There seems to almost be a swing back towards try-hard culture,” Zamiri agrees.

If The Moment has any message, it’s that ironic detachment – “brat vibes” – is its own kind of performance. We are all secretly striving. Perhaps the lamest kind of artifice is to pretend that you aren’t. “Charli and I aren’t ever trying to say Charli is the epitome of cool. What we’re actually trying to say is look how cringy and embarrassing –” he gestures to his T-shirt – “it is to try and curate this image, or express this idea, because you’ve got to try so hard.”

Xcx says The Moment marks the end of the brat era. Zamiri, for one, looks forward to seeing how the film ages, as brat recedes into cultural myth. “I’m really into that idea, because we’re not trying to say that it’s a battle between cool and lame, between good and evil, but more how strange it feels to be perceived, and misunderstood.”