Civil War

Alex Garland’s Civil War is a 2024 American dystopian action film set in a near-future United States fractured by armed conflict. Garland wrote and directed the film, which was produced by A24 and distributed in the United States by the same company. Its central characters are journalists traveling from New York City to Washington, D.C., as forces opposing the federal government advance on the capital.

Kirsten Dunst plays Lee Smith, a veteran war photographer. Wagner Moura plays Joel, a journalist and Lee’s colleague. They travel with Sammy, an older reporter played by Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Jessie, a young photographer played by Cailee Spaeny. Jessie admires Lee and hopes to document the conflict herself. Their journey provides the film’s structure: the group moves through places marked by fighting and encounters civilians, armed groups, and other reporters before reaching Washington.

The film deliberately leaves the political origins of the conflict largely unexplained. The president, played by Nick Offerman, is an authoritarian leader seeking a third term, but the story does not offer a detailed account of the factions’ programs or a conventional history of how the country broke apart. Instead, it follows the journalists’ work and the danger of recording events. The Western Forces, an alliance including California and Texas, are advancing toward the capital, while the film depicts the conflict through scenes encountered along the road.

Civil War was shot in the United States, including locations in Georgia. Its production used practical locations and staged combat sequences to create the appearance of a country at war. Garland worked with cinematographer Rob Hardy, continuing a collaboration that included Ex Machina and Annihilation. The film also features music by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, who had composed scores for earlier Garland projects.

The movie premiered at South by Southwest on March 14, 2024, and opened in U.S. theaters on April 12. It became A24’s highest-grossing film at the time of its release, surpassing the company’s previous domestic box-office record. Its marketing emphasized its large-scale action and premise, while its narrative focused on journalists rather than military leaders or political strategists.

Garland had previously written and directed science-fiction films including Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men. Civil War marked a shift toward a contemporary American setting and a road-trip structure, while retaining his interest in speculative situations. Dunst’s role also placed her at the center of a film built around professional observation: Lee’s camera records violence, but the story repeatedly shows that witnessing and documenting it cannot shield her or her companions from its consequences.