In a depressive musical landscape where the only things popstars seem to sing about are wanting to have sex, having sex, and regretting having sex, the music of Norwegian alt-pop artist AURORA is a beacon of light. She sings about ideas, issues, and themes with gravity. And even when she sings about the small and personal, she does so in a way that relates to the larger systems that shape our world. Her newest album, her fifth studio release, came out in 2024 and is titled What Happened to the Heart? The album, arguably the most political record of her still youthful career, emerged after reading a 2023 letter written by Indigenous activists Sônia Guajajara and Célia Xakriabá (in collaboration with Earthrise) that called for a “revolution in the way we live and understand the world; a revolution from the perspective of the Indigenous mother who resists, cares, heals and protects us.” Her concert film, AURORA: What Happened to the Earth?, however, is a boorishly conventional record of the final performance of her multi-year tour, which is a considerable disappointment because, as a musician and performer, she has resisted mainstream pop conventions. But here, she adopts similar pop conventions in the process of adapting her concert on screen.
The main appeal of What Happened to the Earth? is Aurora Aksnes herself. On stage, she never takes herself too seriously and is always quirky. She warmly and proudly embraces her neurodivergence. She is always smiling, calm, and appears grateful to be where and who she is. She interacts with the audience in a way that stars of her stature rarely dare to. A mostly IMDb-free Gonzalo Lopez, whom she described as a friend to Spin, directs the film in a way that simulates an enjoyable concertgoing experience; if you weren’t there, maybe now you can pretend like you were. But unlike the risks that are so present in AURORA’s music, none are taken here. Besides a random drone that occasionally dots the view as if a fly on a window, the visuals are without flourish; in other words, the “spectacle” is altogether plain. Still, at the end of the day, those who appreciate her music and relish watching her perform will be placated — she sure can sing, and that’s what the people come for.
The artist’s multicultural and social justice inclinations are all another part of her mass appeal, and those too are successfully retained in this screen treatment. AURORA is a Norwegian artist with a Norwegian band and sings in English for Mexicans on the Day of the Dead. She mutters a few lines in Spanish as an effort to identify with them, but at least comes across as sincere. One Palestinian flag is proudly on display in the background, and a fan is shown shouldering another into the arena. She dedicates one song to children from Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria, the Congo, and anywhere else experiencing war. A lesbian couple shares a kiss that the camera doesn’t evade. And amidst all of this, the politics her music are forceful. “The Seed,” one of her songs from a previous project, for example, delivers a cry for systemic change:
You cannot eat money, oh no
When the last tree has fallen
And the rivers are poisoned
You cannot eat money, oh no
Even her appearance itself bears socio-political undertones. Her unshaven armpits reject the infantilizing feminine beauty standards of the West in favor of a more natural look. Humans are hairy and that’s okay! Be yourself, her appearance, much like her music, affirms. This authenticity is essential to her global popularity.
But beyond AURORA’s singular appeal remaining legible in Lopez’s film, little else sells the project effectively. The Mexico City performance on November 15, 2025, was the biggest concert of the performer’s career as of yet — a sold-out 18,000-seat performance at the Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City — yet Lopez isn’t able to capture the scale of the venue in a way better concert films, like say the recent Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience, have. Instead, the camera keeps close to the stage and engages the viewer in a back-and-forth with the singer from up close (in the uber-expensive seating area). Audience faces are recognizable by the end, mostly because of how familiar they have become to us. Lopez smartly limits the audience interviews to a small — and diverse — handful of faces. Still, that necessary sense of grandeur is lacking: it feels like What Happened to the Earth? could have been filmed at any smaller, more intimate concert venue without changing its structure and visual design, despite the obvious catalyst for the film being the fact that this was AURORA’s largest performance. This leaves viewers with a documentary that is altogether vanilla and stylistically limp, though at one that never becomes so unbearable as to make us ask: “What happened to Aurora?” She thankfully persists, even amidst this concert doc’s more meager trappings.
DIRECTOR: Gonzalo Lopez; CAST: AURORA; DISTRIBUTOR: Trafalgar Releasing; IN THEATERS: March 4; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 30 min.
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