The film is set in a retrofuturistic version of 1955 and follows the events of a Junior Stargazer convention in a small rural town. The convention is disrupted by the arrival of an alien, which leads to a series of world-changing events.
Asteroid City is a metatextual film that simultaneously depicts the events of the Junior Stargazer convention and the creation of the play that is being staged about the convention. The film is Anderson's homage to popular memory and mythology about extraterrestrials and UFOs witnessed in the Southwestern desert in close proximity to atomic test sites during the postwar period of the American 20th century.
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