The History of Concrete (2026)

“Wilson’s debut feature The History of Concrete shows the expert essayist as sneakily profound as ever, contemplating life and art and piecing together meaning from the fragments.” — Nicolas Rapold, Sight & Sound

“This is a weird, fun movie that goes in some very unexpected directions…You’re left wondering how a movie about concrete could leave a lump in your throat. But that’s how Wilson works, making us see what we might not have otherwise.” — Alissa Wilkinson, The New York Times

SYNOPSIS

John Wilson brings the wonderfully sideways curiosity of HBO’s How To with John Wilson to the big screen with his first feature, beginning with an apparently mundane subject and discovering an entire world hiding inside it. With his television series finished and his next project uncertain, Wilson turns his camera toward concrete, following his curiosity through New York construction, deteriorating roads and public spaces, an enormous industry convention, environmental questions, eccentric specialists, and the innumerable digressions that inevitably catch his eye. What could have been a straightforward documentary about an everyday building material instead becomes something much more characteristically Wilsonian, as chance encounters and unlikely associations gradually reveal how profoundly the modern world depends upon a substance most of us barely notice. Along the way, his attempts to get the film itself made become part of the story, adding another layer to a funny, personal, and unexpectedly wide-ranging exploration of what we build, what we neglect, and what it takes to keep things from falling apart.