Alex Garland is the writer and director of the 2024 dystopian film Civil War. Starring in the movie with Kirsten Dunst are Nick Offerman, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, and Stephen McKinley Henderson. The story revolves around a group of journalists traveling around the country as the Second American Civil War, which has encompassed the entire country, rages on.

The narrative of the American Civil War is The United States, ruled by its third-term president, descends into a dystopian dictatorship in the near future due to a fast-escalating multiparty civil war. Jessie, a teenage photographer who looks up to renowned and experienced photojournalist Lee Smith, is saved from a suicide bombing in New York City by Lee.

By July Fourth, Lee and her colleague Joel hope to visit Washington, D.C. to conduct an exclusive interview with the President before the rebel groups storm the nation’s capital. Their mentor and veteran reporter Sammy goes with them to the front lines at Charlottesville, Virginia, despite Jessie’s attempts to talk them out of the trip because she wants to work as a war journalist herself. As Jessie encounters front-line battle for the first time, Lee, Joel, and Sammy mentor her in the field, recording urban warfare between the U.S. military and the resistance militias.

After avoiding a renegade sharpshooter and making visits to a camp for refugees and a picturesque village, the four reunite with their Hongkonger reporting partners, Tony and Bohai. But before Sammy can save his friends by running over two of the militia members, the six come across radical and nationalist militia soldiers who execute villagers and bury them in a mass grave. The soldiers also kill Tony and Bohai. During their escape, Jessie suffers trauma and Sammy sustains a fatal wound; subsequently, he passes away from his wounds when the gang arrives at a Western Forces (WF) camp in Charlottesville, where numerous Loyalist generals had already submitted.

Joel helps Lee get through a PTSD episode, while Jessie takes a more proactive approach to covering the violence as the group follows the WF as they storm Washington, D.C. There is a firefight between the WF and the Secret Service at the strongly secured White House. After protecting Jessie from the gunfire, Lee is killed, and she takes a picture of her mentor’s passing.

When the WF soldiers discover the President hidden in the Oval Office, a furious Joel declines to speak with him in order to get one last remark. The President pleads with Joel for forgiveness just prior to Jessie snapping a picture of his quick death. A developing picture of the WF soldiers standing over the President’s corpse and grinning can be seen during the credits.

It was announced in January 2022 that A24 had engaged Alex Garland to write and direct the movie, which would feature Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Cailee Spaeny. Karl Glusman was revealed as a cast member in April. Garland referred to the movie as a follow-up to his 2022 picture Men in an interview with The Daily Telegraph from May. He claimed that the movie is “set at an indeterminate point in the future–just far enough ahead for me to add a conceit—and serves as a sci-fi allegory for our currently polarized predicament.” During that same interview, Sonoya Mizuno—who had starred in every one of Garland’s prior motion pictures—was disclosed as a cast member.

On March 15, 2022, principal photography got underway in Atlanta. Production had shifted to London by May. Civil War, with a $50 million production budget, was A24’s most expensive movie to date.

Garland said in a March 2024 interview with The Guardian that he plans to stop directing after Civil War and concentrate only on writing.

On March 14, 2024, Civil War made its international premiere at South by Southwest. On April 12, 2024, A24 and Entertainment Film Distributors respectively distributed the film in theaters across the United States and the United Kingdom. Critics gave the movie favorable reviews.

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