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Mamdani’s Team Redefined Political Video. Now They’re Betting on Short Films.

Premiering exclusively in The Nation, a new short film produced by City Hall and narrated by Morgan Specter highlights the efforts of the biggest tenant-led union in New York City.

Still from Union of Pinnacle Tenants.

On January 1, hours after Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City, he visited a rent-stabilized apartment building in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. For months, residents of 85 Clarkson Avenue had been raising the alarm that their homes, managed by Pinnacle Realty, were falling into disrepair: Pipes were rusting, leaks spreading; in one unit, a crack in the ceiling had released a cascade of cockroaches.

Pinnacle’s 93-building portfolio had accrued more than 5,000 open hazardous violations and 14,000 complaints, Mamdani said during a press conference held in the 85 Clarkson lobby. He paced the hallways alongside tenants and toured an apartment with faulty heating. He knelt on the floor, peeling back crumbling vinyl tiles.

Trailing the mayor that day, as they had throughout his runaway campaign, was a video team whose energetic, cinematic style has become a hallmark of Mamdani’s political brand. Work by that team—currently made up of six filmmakers whose backgrounds span from video journalism to streaming documentaries—created a modern, buzzy visual language that helped propel Mamdani to an unlikely victory.

It’s a common refrain that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. But Mamdani has been governing in the same language that made him mayor. On the first day of 2026, the team continued to hone its visual instincts, resulting in their most ambitious project yet: a 13-minute documentary........

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