A theater full of screaming fans packed the Beacon Theater on Manhattan's Upper West Side on Friday night for the premiere of Madonna's Confessions II, a short visual album she brought to the Tribeca Festival in New York.
The more-than-10-minute film is set to the first six songs on Madonna's upcoming album of the same name and follows the Queen of Pop as she is chased by a SWAT team of robot-like women carrying cameras. The action moves from an apartment to a forest, where she dances with scantily clad performers with "lasers coming out of every orifice," then to a car, a nightclub, and finally a crowded bathroom where Madonna and a group of celebrity friends throw a dance party before she brings the celebration home.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the cast includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Kate Moss, Odessa A'zion, Debi Mazar, Gwendoline Christie, Richard E. Grant, Archie Madekwe, and Sabrina Carpenter, who appears as Madonna's "Bring Your Love" duet partner. Julia Garner, who has been linked to a long-discussed Madonna biopic, makes a cameo in a club scene. The final celebrity appearance belongs to Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon, who closes the film with the line, "Cut, bitch." Madonna later revealed that she and Leon co-wrote a song together for the album.
Madonna said she began working on the Confessions II album about a year and a half ago while waiting for her biopic project to come together. At longtime manager Guy Oseary's suggestion, she decided to make a short film to accompany the album's first six songs. She described herself as a cinephile and said she chose the film format because it has "inspired [her] life," adding that the word "video" by contrast "seems cheap." She noted flatly, "It was good when it was just me and MTV."
The film was directed by David Toro and Solomon Chase, the duo known as TORSO. A post-screening Q&A was moderated by Anderson Cooper, who stepped in at the last minute after Jimmy Fallon had a scheduling conflict.
During the conversation, Cooper noted that every phone in the audience had been sealed in a Yondr pouch for the duration of the event. That prompted Madonna to speak about what she called the "persistent need" people now have to document everything. She used her appearance at Coachella alongside Sabrina Carpenter as an example, describing how jarring it was to look out at an audience and see screens instead of faces. Dancing, she said, is a "deep tribal experience" that connects people to each other and the universe, and she described that truth as now being tainted by the inability to be present. Her parting message to the audience was direct: "Put your fucking phones down and connect."
Confessions II, the film, premieres on YouTube on June 8. The full studio album arrives July 3 via Warner Records. Madonna's next confirmed public performance is the FIFA World Cup Final halftime show on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. She also teased a few surprise appearances in the months ahead but did not announce any tour plans.
The status of the biopic remains unresolved. Universal shelved the project in 2023. Garner said last summer that the film is "supposed to still happen," and Madonna said in 2024 she was working on the script again. A limited series project with director-producer Shawn Levy at Netflix was also announced last year.
