Five awards, one surreal world, and Kodak 16mm shot secretly in Kyiv
It won Video of the Year plus cinematography, production design and visual effects at the UK Music Video Awards 2025. Most of the crew did not know who they were shooting for until they arrived.
Watch on YouTubeAt the UK Music Video Awards 2025 this took five: Video of the Year, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Visual Effects, and Best Hip Hop/Grime/Rap Video – International.
It was shot in Kyiv, on Kodak 16mm, by Iconoclast with the Ukrainian company shelter.film. Albert Zurashvili, who co-founded shelter.film, described the production to Billboard Georgia:
It was a freestyle of developing and polishing the details of every scene on the go in a short-term and extra-confidential manner. Most of the crew coming to the set were unaware of who we were shooting for and were surprised when they arrived.
And on the format:
Working with film is always exciting, as you don't see the final result until the material is developed and scanned.
Zurashvili singles out the DP by name: "One of the highlights for us is that we involved an incredibly talented Ukrainian director of photography, Denys Lushchyk, in shooting this music video." Lushchyk took the UKMVA cinematography award for it.
Credits as published
Directors Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia. Cinematographer Denys Lushchyk. Production designer Misha Levchenko. VFX Vania Heymann and Tal Baltuch. Stylist Galina Sokolovska. Producer and executive producer Natan Schottenfels, with Francesco Colombo also credited as EP. Iconoclast with shelter.film, Kyiv, for RCA / A$AP Rocky Recordings.
One date note: the video was released in September 2024 and swept the 2025 awards, so it sits just outside a strict 2025 window. We are including it because four of those five awards are craft awards.
Missing a credit? Tell us who worked on this and we will add them and say that we did.
