From Mushpit to The Moment: how Bertie Brandes’ cult mag led her to the big screen

Bertie Brandes hasn’t gone to sleep before midnight in a decade. ​“I won’t, I can’t!” she cries, calling in from her London flat. Over the last year, this nocturnal rhythm has suited her lifestyle quite nicely, given she’s been busy writing and working on a film for Charli xcx. The Moment, a mockumentary that Bertie co-wrote with the film’s director Aidan Zamiri, marks her screenwriting debut; it premiered at Sundance last week. As firsts go, it doesn’t get much bigger than this.

“We delivered the first draft of the script on New Years’ Eve 2025, and then we were shooting by March,” Bertie says. ​“That’s absolutely insane, isn’t it?” Before midnight or not – it’s a miracle she’s been getting any sleep at all.

With a stacked cast featuring Alexander Skarsgård, Rachel Sennott, Kylie Jenner, and Jamie Demetriou, The Moment mirrors and satirises Charli’s frenzied Brat-era ascent. The lightly fictionalised Charli finds herself in the throes of the kind of success she’s always dreamed of, but now she’s confronted with an identity crisis. How much control does she have over her own image? Where does branding stop and the self begin? In many ways, this is a beast of her own making. Should she keep feeding it?

It’s impossible to understand how The Moment came to be without first talking about Mushpit, the much-loved magazine Bertie co-founded with stylist Charlotte Roberts in 2010. Flicking through its final issue, which was published in 2018, I’m struck by how prescient it was in terms of the way we now communicate images and ideas online: with vulnerability, yearning, playfulness, humour.

Designed by Richard Turley (“suck it bitchessss” sits next to his name on the masthead), the cover features a selfie of model Lily McMenamy wearing bunny ears. Anti-consumerist sentiment ran through the magazine – the only ads you’ll find here are fake ones – while the editor’s letter encourages readers to ​“take courage from our excursion from the depths of millennial hell.”

There’s a quiz designed to help you find ​“your perfect pathetic rebound”; a diagram breaking down ​“levels of social outrage”; a dictionary of commonly used terms at the time, all of which are too rude to repeat here; Frank Lebon shot by his brother Tyrone; the Russo-Zamiri guide to being business-savvy, ​“great if you want to get fired soon”, put together by Aidan and fashion designer Paolina Russo. Given both of their career trajectories, they didn’t follow their own advice.

Anarchic and unafraid, Mushpit took the neuroses of being in your twenties and shoved them into a semi-glossy magazine – screenshots, funny texts and 2am notes app ramblings included. It’s an explosion of emotion and irreverence, an artefact that captures The Vibe of the time, in all its messiness, with great precision. ​“We went through all the trouble of printing it but we were obsessed with having such an informal tone of voice on the page – presenting something one way and completely undercutting it at the same time,” Bertie explains.

At the same time she launched Mushpit, Bertie worked for Vice, where she wrote a feminist column called Pretty Girl Bullshit about the internet, a gig she landed off the strength of her blog. When Mushpit folded, Bertie moved into advertising – the irony of this is not lost on her – and, for a while, pretty much stopped writing. That is, until she re-emerged onto London’s literary scene a couple of years ago: first via Substack and then by publishing fiction, some of which you can find over at very cool mag Die Quieter Please, and zines, which Bertie plans to keep making until she dies.

“Mushpit was about discovering design, politics, feminism, intersectionality – that dreaded word – and there was no top-down. We were constantly learning and sharing things with each other. And fucking hell, man, no adverts! I’m so proud of it. I miss it so much. The process of working on The Moment has felt similar, and I think throughout my life, I’ll keep searching for that same feeling while working: total freedom.”

Hi, Bertie. Before we get onto The Moment, we should probably acknowledge what came before – and helped lay the groundwork – for it: Mushpit. What kind of place does the magazine occupy in your heart and in your head these days?

My brother watched The Moment, an early cut of it, and the first thing he said to me when it finished was: ​‘This is Mushpit as a film’. I co-wrote this with Aidan and he directed it – this is his thing. But I would say, spiritually, it is so close to everything that I care about and have always cared about, which was so manifest in Mushpit.

Do you have a little Mushpit-shaped devil on your shoulder, guiding you, informing your work?

First of all I met Aidan through Mushpit. We were doing this talk at Central Saint Martins and he was assigned to show us around the building, and we completely fell in love. He just got it immediately, embodied it and is the spirit of Mushpit. I think it really impacted how I decided to navigate my career as a writer, because we obviously didn’t make any money from Mushpit. I was working in advertising but also still kind of trying to be a journalist and writer. It’s very rigid, the way that you are expected to write as a journalist. I was completely spoiled by Mushpit because I have this obsession with controlling the way that my writing is encountered, which actually completely put me off being, quote unquote, a career writer. I stopped writing completely, almost; I tried to find other ways to figure out what was interesting, that spirit of freedom.

You and Aidan worked on Charli’s 360 video together, which he directed and you scripted. Did that lead you to The Moment?

I have a writing credit on that music video but it was pretty minimal compared to other ways that we’ve worked together over the years. I just sort of helped him, but it was so fun. Then we worked on this Nike Nite Sport advert which was quite narrative-led – it featured Gabbriette in high school being a goth, and straight after that we did this Google Ad with Troye and Charli. It’s so weird to say it again, I am so anti-corporate – I hate that you have to say that – but us working on those adverts, writing dialogue in a script form, it was so fun and, dare I say it, so easy. It did pave the way for when Charli had this idea to do a film. It felt like, naturally, we were one hundred per cent the people to write it. It all fell into place very quickly. I felt completely comfortable, which is rare.

What’s it like to write a film based on someone’s life?

After doing Mushpit, I started making zines, and these zines basically brought together text and image. I think doing that was, in a really weird way, the closest thing to the experience of having made the film. The reason that I stopped wanting to be a writer was because it wasn’t visual enough and I didn’t have enough control. Aidan was so incredibly open and generous with the process. I got to be on set every single day of this shoot, which is completely unheard of for a writer. I got to go sit with him in the edit. It was such an end to end, incredibly creatively fulfilling experience. Traditionally you write the script and then that’s it, you see the film when it’s done. This is what I wanna do now. It’s an unbelievable pivot.

How did you visualise The Moment?

For me, there are a couple of really crucial parts to the story, and one of them is Charli’s internal journey. I didn’t know her before, and so in a really useful way, I was always on the outside. That meant I was able to piece together a narrative. This is Charli’s story and no part of me wants to make it sound like I was writing that for her. But I think what interested me was taking elements of it and understanding they can become universal feelings. That thing she’d spoken about of ​‘When is this thing gonna end? Then who am I?’ To me, that perfectly tapped in with feelings that I’ve had in relationships. When you’re with somebody, it’s turned into complete fucking hell, you’re in a horrible situation and you wake up everyday wishing it wasn’t your situation. And yet you don’t wanna break up, because there’s this fear of being forced to figure out what it means to be on your own, to redefine who you are. Your whole identity feels like it’s being torn apart. So that, in a way, is very similar to what I do with the zines. You take one specific feeling and then you blow it open and forensically identify the different components of it. I hope that we have successfully done that, where Charli’s feelings are really clear, relatable, understandable and meaningful.

What were you reading and watching while working on The Moment?

Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap. [Michael Patrick Jann’s] Drop Dead Gorgeous was a huge reference. The Joaquin Phoenix mockumentary I’m Still Here, which Casey Affleck directed, was too. There’s a scene in [Wim Wenders’ 1977 film] Wings of Desire that I thought about a huge amount. I read a lot of Bruce Wagner around the time that we were writing The Moment.

I also am a huge Kaufman fan. I think that weirdness comes through. Finally, we have Jamie Demitriou – so Armando Iannucci and Alan Partridge, you can’t get away from the fact that this is a British comedy. Me and Aidan are so happy that we managed to do that.

What was the experience of screening The Moment at Sundance like? How does it feel to have this project, at least partially, out in the world?

It turns out I love Utah. It’s one of the most beautiful, weird and geographically overwhelming places I’ve ever been. In the mountains and valleys there are enormous dinosaur fossils and undiscovered metals from prehistoric meteors. Sundance is like a big shiny brand activation in the middle of all of that. It’s fun and ridiculous, surreal, obviously a huge honour and equally one which comes with its own unspoken set of rules. The Moment coming out was always going to be strange, suddenly losing control of this thing we’ve been obsessing over for so long. I hope people can tell how excited we all are about this film, and support us in trying to do something that wants to be different, that doesn’t follow a format and that in some way feels chaotic and alive.

What would be your dream movie to make?

Well I just watched Possession again, one of my favourite films. I wish it had been written by a woman. Its depiction of female sadness is so deeply relatable and accurate. I think my dream project would be to write a film like Possession and explore the limitations of that. I also wanna write the SpongeBob movie. It all feels plausible and fun right now.