Metacinema has long explored the blurred line between fiction and reality. In Balenciaga’s new campaign, directed by Celine Song and starring Sarah Pidgeon, New York becomes both the set and the backstage of its own performance.
New York already feels like a city permanently filming itself. Taxis, crowded intersections and anonymous moments unfold with the strange awareness of being watched and transformed into content. Balenciaga’s new Fall 2026 campaign, ‘A New York Minute’, moves somewhere between a fashion film and a backstage documentary. Directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Celine Song and starring actress Sarah Pidgeon, the project consists of three films, each exactly sixty seconds long and shot entirely across Manhattan.
The campaign leans directly into metacinema: films within films, visible camera crews, staged scenes exposed in real time and the constant collapse between fiction and reality. Song intentionally keeps the cameras rolling after “cut”, revealing the cinematic machinery usually hidden behind polished image-making.
Pidgeon moves through quintessentially New York moments – picking up dry cleaning, crossing intersections, cabbing home at night – before each scene gradually reveals itself as part of a larger production. In one sequence, she even walks through the filming of a fictional romantic comedy, adding another layer to the campaign’s metanarrative structure.
Rather than presenting New York as a fantasy backdrop, ‘A New York Minute’ captures the city as an endless performance already in progress. Passersby film the shoot on their phones, backstage moments become content and the boundary between public life and spectacle almost disappears.
The films highlight Balenciaga’s Le City, Le 7 Bowling and Rodeo bags alongside pieces from the Fall 2026 collection, while the project extends beyond the films through @keeppprolling, a temporary Instagram account featuring backstage images captured by Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli alongside photographers Monaris and Zora Sicher.
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