In Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, the main story takes place in 1955.
The fictional desert town hosts the Junior Stargazer convention in September 1955. Teenagers and their parents gather there after a meteorite impact, while the film also presents a separate black-and-white television framework about the creation of a play.
The year is important because the story draws on mid-century American science culture, Cold War anxiety, roadside architecture, and early television. Asteroid City is therefore not set in the present day, even though its layered production sometimes shifts between theatrical performance, television narration, and the town’s events.