Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, The Last Waltz from The Band and The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter are three of the greatest concert movies ever made. To that list you can now add Paul Thomas Anderson’s Cameron Winter At Carnegie Hall, which receives its UK premiere today (October 8) at the London Film Festival. Taking place at the famed New York venue – everyone from Sergei Rachmaninoff to Aretha Franklin has graced its hallowed stage – the Geese frontman’s solo show is brought to the screen with a resonant intimacy that makes you feel like you’re sitting right at the piano stool next to him.
Anderson’s first work since his Oscar-winning One Battle After Another, the gig was recorded on December 11, 2025 as part of Cameron Winter’s tour in support of debut solo record ‘Heavy Metal’. Shot on 35mm, lending the film a grainy quality as the lights go down, it’s no mean feat to spirit cinema audiences into the heart of Winter’s world. With his Steinway grand piano positioned on stage, Winter is seated with his back to the audience. Head down in ferocious concentration, the New Yorker sings with that textured, low-growl voice, as if he’s in a smoky dive bar not a near 4000-seater venue.
Opening with ‘It All Fell In The River’, Winter is a man of precious few words. Only occasionally does he speak (such as introducing the lyrically deft ‘Cancer Of The Skull’), instead ploughing through his 12-song set-list as if his life depended on it. Still, wry humour leaks out. At one point, he gets up and heads to the side door, comically tugging on it as if he wants to flee the stage – only for a staff member to inquisitively pop their head out.
Tellingly, he leaves the audience in raptures, with precious few camera phones out recording Winter’s every move. Why bother when you’ve got an acclaimed director doing it for you? Among those joining Anderson as the cinematographers that night are actor-director Benny Safdie, fresh off his role as King Agamemnon in The Odyssey (no sign of the armour here). From high-up-in-the-gods viewpoints to tight close-ups, the range of perspectives Anderson gives is thrilling. Even his self-conscious shot that sends the camera barrelling through the doors onto the stage, is a surprising moment to savour.
True, this doesn’t have the rock’n’roll energy of those other aforementioned concert movies – but Winter performing his solo material was never going to see him bouncing around his ivories like Jerry Lee Lewis. Looking eerily like Anderson’s regular collaborator, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, Winter’s songs of mortality and mental chaos are given the hushed spotlight they deserve.
There’s a reverential quality to Anderson’s first ever concert movie. Being whisked through ‘Drinking Age’, ‘$0’ and ‘The Rolling Stones’ in just 70 minutes is like mainlining pure joy. Just make sure you don’t leave as the credits roll. For after the text has crawled across the screen – including the amusing aside next to the film’s eponymous title that reads ‘Dead at 23’ (luckily, Winter turned 24 in March), the musician re-emerges for his one-song encore. Just like anything Winters does, you’ll be kicking yourself if you miss it.
‘Cameron Winter At Carnegie Hall’ will be out in 2027 via MUBI
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