Why a film about the next American Civil War is Alex Garland ‘hotwiring’ the zeitgeist once again

Using the mob charging Capitol Hill as a jumping-off point for his latest film, British writer and director’s Alex Garland imagines a team of journalists travelling across the United States during a rapidly escalating Second American Civil war. Geoffrey Macnab looks back at the career of one of the UK’s great modern auteurs and why this latest work could be his most controversial yet

Alex Garland’s new film Civil War brings the carnage of feuding political factions in the US to fruition (AP)

The turmoil in Washington, DC on 6 January 2021 has nothing on Civil War. If the mob of Trump supporters descending on the capital sparked (ultimately short-lived) fears of open warfare between the US’s feuding political factions, then Alex Garland’s new film brings that carnage to fruition. The British writer-director of Ex Machina (2014) and Annihilation (2018) has set his movie during a second US civil war, one which pits an authoritarian government ruled by Nick Offerman against the “western forces” from Texas and California.

The dystopian drama, also starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura (Narcos) and Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), unfolds in a near and horribly plausible future. Nineteen states have seceded from the Union. Americans are killing Americans. Our protagonists are journalists, embedded with the military and racing against time to reach DC before the rebel factions get there.

Filmed back in the middle of 2022, Civil War (out in cinemas on Friday) has been ready for some time. But its release has seemingly been timed by distributor A24 for maximum impact in North America: the film arrived days before the US Supreme Court hearing into Donald Trump’s claim of presidential immunity on charges that he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.