The ‘Sky’ Is The Limit In New David Byrne Concert Film

David Byrne has turned his latest live spectacle into a movie — and, appropriately for an artist who has spent decades blurring the boundaries between music, theater and visual art, he shot it on 70mm. A new concert film capturing Byrne’s Who Is the Sky? tour was filmed over multiple sold-out nights at Baltimore’s Hippodrome, his hometown venue, with Brady Corbet, director of The Brutalist, behind the camera. The film is currently in postproduction, with distribution and release details still to come.

The project extends Byrne’s unusually rich history with the concert film. Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads doc Stop Making Sense remains a landmark of the form, while Spike Lee’s David Byrne’s American Utopia translated that Byrne stage production to the screen and earned two Emmys. The new film captures a production that has now played more than 150 shows across four continents since launching in September 2025.

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It puts Byrne alongside 13 musicians, singers and dancers in a constantly moving stage environment, folding choreography, visual art, storytelling and music into one continuous performance. Beyond the acclaimed 2025 album Who Is the Sky?, the set reaches back to Talking Heads favorites including “Psycho Killer” and “Burning Down the House,” plus the rarity “Houses in Motion,” which hadn’t been aired since 2009.

Corbet, whose The Brutalist earned 10 Oscar nominations and three wins, shot the Baltimore performances on both 8-perf and 15-perf 70mm. “When Brady told me he wanted to shoot our show in 70 millimeter (70 millimeter!), I didn’t realize what a difference it would make until I saw some frames he sent me,” Byrne said. “He was right. It really does capture the wide screen visual scope of the show. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Corbet added, “I am so grateful to David Byrne and his entire team for entrusting us to capture his hometown show on 8-perf and 15-perf 70mm. The band’s performance is an inclusive celebration of community, and of Baltimore in particular — one of America’s most under-appreciated historic cities.”

Byrne is also preparing to add another chapter to his multidisciplinary output with Sleeping Beauties, his forthcoming book about ideas and discoveries that were overlooked, forgotten and eventually rediscovered. Out Oct. 6, the book ranges from dark matter, lichen and continental drift to technologies including solar panels and the steam engine, as well as artists from Bach and Bruegel to Vermeer and Melville. Byrne argues that breakthroughs often reawaken when someone from outside an established discipline breaks through its boundaries.

Sleeping Beauties also has Byrne hitting the road in a different capacity this fall, with book events scheduled in the U.K. starting Nov. 8 in London.

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