Las Vegas

A vivid exploration of Las Vegas—where illusion, risk, and reinvention shape a city unlike any other—part of Travel with a Writer, The Walking Tree’s series pairing leading authors with the places they know best. Las Vegas is a city built on the promise that anything can change overnight. It is a place of spectacle and simulation, where global landmarks are reproduced in the desert and fortunes are made and lost in an instant. Beneath the neon and excess, however, lies a more complex reality: a city constantly remaking itself, unmoored from history and driven by the logic of chance. Drawing on years of returning to Las Vegas—as a filmmaker, observer, and participant—Jérôme Schmidt moves beyond the surface to trace how the city actually functions. Through casinos, neighborhoods, and the shifting edges of the Strip, he explores a place where identity is fluid, risk is normalized, and belief—however fragile—is what keeps everything in motion. Energetic, unsettling, and sharply observed, this is an exploration of Las Vegas where the line between illusion and reality is never fixed—and where the stakes are always real.