In recent years, much fuss has been made about our foremost filmmakers’ apparent reluctance to set their films in the present day. Instead, they have flocked to the comforts of nostalgia, just as audiences have. Christopher Nolan retreated to the building of the atom bomb (and next year, ancient Greece). Quentin Tarantino still pines for a lost Los Angeles of the 1970s. Martin Scorsese hasn’t made a present-day film since 2006’s The Departed, while Robert Eggers has said, ‘the idea of photographing a cellphone is just death’. With the exception of Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland (2020) and, I suppose, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023), our reigning generation of filmmakers seems wholly unequipped – or perhaps simply unwilling – to meet our present moment head on.