The film is twelve songs, one singer and a Steinway grand piano. Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall, Paul Thomas Anderson’s record of a sold-out solo show in New York last December, puts listeners in a famous room with very little between them and the music.
Janus Films and the Criterion Collection released its first trailer on 14 October. The film reaches US cinemas from 20 November, and every screening will be on 35mm film. For anyone who wants the music first, the full performance is already out as a live album.
Who Cameron Winter Is
Winter is the singer of Geese, a band from Brooklyn. Their latest album, Getting Killed, was named the best album of 2025 by The New Yorker, NME and Stereogum, Gold Derby notes. He also makes records on his own. His solo debut, Heavy Metal, came out in 2024 and was ranked among that year’s best albums by Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Paste and Mojo.
In December 2025, after a months-long sold-out tour with Geese, he went home to New York to play a single show at Carnegie Hall. The film’s official synopsis says little more than that, and then simply announces that this is the movie.
He was 23 at the time. That made him one of the youngest pop artists ever to headline the hall. Only Bob Dylan, who played there at 22 in 1963, was slightly younger. Winter has since turned 24, as NYLON points out.
What the Show Sounded Like
The set was stripped back. Winter accompanied himself on the piano, and the New York Film Festival’s synopsis describes his vibrato filling a hall famous for its acoustics. The Film Stage published the full synopsis alongside the trailer.
Most of the songs came from Heavy Metal. Three had not been released when he played them. Winter told Rolling Stone this summer that he was not sure whether any of those new songs would make his next solo album. In the same interview, he joked that audiences give him so much credit that he could make mistakes and still be cheered.
The festival’s programmers present the night as the moment a star arrived. They describe Winter as a rare kind of art-pop balladeer with a cabaret streak, and a performer who pairs bravado with sensitivity. Before the premiere, the festival’s artistic director, Dennis Lim, had promised audiences a concert film that would be remembered for a long time.
The trailer gives very little away. Rolling Stone notes that it offers about a second of “Drinking Age”, which came midway through the twelve-song set, and a title card that declares him dead at 23. It also shows crowds filing into the hall on a cold December night, and scenes away from the stage, with the crew backstage and inside the ticket office.
How Paul Thomas Anderson Filmed It
For listeners who know the music better than the films, Anderson is the Oscar-winning director behind Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza. His most recent feature, One Battle After Another, won six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
He brought a crew to Carnegie Hall on 11 December 2025, in the middle of that film’s awards season.
According to the festival synopsis, the show was shot on 16mm and 35mm film, mixing close images of Winter with wide views of the hall. Benny Safdie, Anderson’s collaborator on Licorice Pizza, co-produced the film and also worked as a camera operator, World of Reel reports. The producers are Sara Murphy, Erica Frauman and Maggie Ambrose, with Anderson also credited.
The film is short, running a little over an hour, and it stays close to the music. NYLON contrasts that with the many recent tour documentaries that spend much of their time on a star’s life away from the stage. Here, the time away from Winter goes to the hall itself and the people running the show.
This is Anderson’s second music documentary. The first, Junun, also premiered at the New York Film Festival, in 2015. Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall had its world premiere there on 1 October.
The Sound Behind the Pictures
The audio was recorded, produced and mixed by Ariel Rechtshaid, who has won Grammys for his albums with Vampire Weekend and Adele. His recording serves both the film and the record.
That record is already out. Live at Carnegie Hall was released on 9 October through Partisan Records and Play It Again Sam, with the full performance and no pictures. Listeners can hear the whole show now, six weeks before the film’s cinema run begins.
For a film like this, the order may suit people who are new to Winter. The album lets the songs settle first. The film then adds the room, the crowd and the man at the piano.
How the 35mm Tour Works
The run opens on 20 November in New York and Los Angeles. From there it moves city by city to large historic theatres, including the Aero in Los Angeles, the Castro in San Francisco and the Music Box in Chicago.
Every US screening is on film. The prints are being made by Fotokem in Los Angeles under the filmmakers’ supervision, FirstShowing reports. Outside the US, Mubi is handling the release. Tickets for the tour are on sale through the film’s official site.
What the Critics Said
The response from the festival was strong. As the trailer arrived, the film held a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 86, with every counted review positive.
Rolling Stone’s David Fear wrote that it does what a great concert film should, capturing a once-in-a-lifetime show and lifting it. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman called it rapturous. NME’s James Mottram ranked it among the all-time great concert films, and IndieWire compared it with Stop Making Sense, for a quieter kind of audience.
The descriptions of the premiere itself are just as telling. Rolling Stone’s review described a festival audience so quiet that it greeted every song with hushed reverence. The Film Stage’s Jordan Raup, who saw it on 35mm, called the premiere one of the most spiritually transporting experiences of this year’s festival. FirstShowing’s Alex Billington argues that viewers who do not know Winter’s music at all will still find it an enchanting piece of cinema.
Music documentaries have won the documentary Oscar before, including Searching for Sugar Man, 20 Feet from Stardom and Summer of Soul. Straight concert films have a thinner record there, with Woodstock’s win in 1971 the clearest example. Gold Derby does not currently list this one among the front-runners.
GetMusic.News’s curator team:
A piano, a voice and one of the best-sounding rooms in New York is about as exposed as a singer can get. Our tip: hear Live at Carnegie Hall at home first, then see the film on its 35mm run. Knowing the songs frees you to watch the room, the crew and the crowd, which the trailer suggests the film cares about as much as the stage.
For another night when a band took unreleased songs to a famous room, read how Big Thief played a whole unreleased triple album at the Ryman. Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall opens in US cinemas on 20 November.
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