Asteroid City (2023)

A 2023 American comedy-drama film written, directed, and produced by Wes Anderson. The film is set in a retrofuturistic version of the 1950s and simultaneously depicts the events of a Junior Stargazer convention and the creation of a play. The convention is organized to bring together students and parents from across the country for fellowship and scholarly competition.

The film opens with a TV documentary, narrated by Bryan Cranston, telling the story of the theatrical "Asteroid City", a work by fictional playwright Conrad Earp. The play is set at a remote Western meteor crash site hosting a sort of Space Camp. The camp is disrupted by world-changing events.

The plot revolves around a grieving father who travels with his tech-obsessed family to small rural Asteroid City to compete in a junior stargazing event. His world view is disrupted forever. The human drama of the Asteroid City portion of the film finds the characters negotiating with awful grief, which is interrupted by not one but two visitations by an alien spacecraft.

The film is Anderson's homage to popular memory and mythology about extra-terrestrials and UFOs witnessed in the Southwestern desert in close proximity to atomic test sites during the post-war period of the American 20th century.