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 titled Union of Pinnacle Tenants.

The short film, which will be released tomorrow on the mayor’s social-media platforms, signals an evolution in how the administration is using video to communicate with New Yorkers. Part explainer, part issue-driven documentary, the film pairs observational footage of the tenants at 85 Clarkson Avenue with an interview with Cea Weaver, the head of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.

Throughout, the documentary takes a notably jaunty tone: It’s narrated by Morgan Specter, an actor and outspoken advocate for progressive politics, who intones his lines over a pizzicato-string score with the literary panache of Alec Baldwin in The Royal Tenenbaums. “She’s here to tell us a story,” Specter says as he introduces Weaver, who gazes into the camera from a stately, upholstered armchair.

Current Issue

July/August 2026 Issue

More Andersonian whimsy: the film unfolds its account over five chapters, each introduced by an onscreen title. The chapter headings—“The Buildings,” “The Slumlord,” “The Tenants,” and so on—and chyrons are rendered in a sans-serif, sunflower-yellow typeface with a red drop shadow.

Our central subject is Josie Wells, a longtime tenant of the 85 Clarkson. She grew up there, and holds memories of its earlier days, when the building was clean and well maintained. Garbage was kept under control. Christmas decorations were even installed in the lobby over the holidays. “This notion that people who live in rent-stabilized buildings can’t have these amenities, I think, is crazy,” she says early on in the film.

Wells, we come to learn as the film progresses, began sharing complaints with her neighbors, and eventually organized a tenants’ association. They went on to connect with residents of other buildings managed by Pinnacle Realty, and after months of discussion, formed a union. The group hoped to challenge their landlord and have a say in who manages their property. In referring to Pinnacle, they prefer the term “slumlord.”

“The Union of Pinnacle Tenants has shown what becomes possible when neighbors organize,” Mamdani said in a statement to The Nation. “Across nearly 100 buildings, tenants came together and won important victories that made real, material impacts in New Yorkers’ lives. I’m proud to stand with them as they continue the fight for affordable, dignified housing across the city.”

The film shows how, in the mid-2000s, Pinnacle snapped up more than 100 rent-regulated buildings, then pursued aggressive efforts to push out tenants. In 2025, the company filed for bankruptcy, putting its buildings up for auction in court. The film pairs Pinnacle’s story with a brisk history of New York’s rent protections, beginning with the post–World War I housing shortage and culminating in the landmark 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act.

The film marks a departure from much of the work that the Mamdani administration has produced thus far. There’s no news peg, no rush to release it for a holiday or anniversary. At once a triumphant David and Goliath story and a how-to guide for grassroots organizing, the film is closer in kind to sleekly produced public-access television than the scroll-and-you-miss-it vertical content you’d normally find on social media.

“Thoughtful, accessible video is a great way to communicate with the greatest city in the world,” Matt Rauschenbach, a spokesman for the mayor, told me. “New Yorkers deserve to see themselves reflected in world-class content about their city and government that is free and accessible to all.”