Between Fashion and Music 2026
“What lies between fashion and music? A vast spectrum of works that value style and aesthetic, whether visual or auditory. Now in its tenth edition, this programme has become a role I truly cherish: a chance to share my perspective on some of the most influential recent video works in fashion and music. This year, I have been thinking a lot about the state of taste. In an industry increasingly shaped by algorithms and AI, where anything can be generated and everything can be optimised, taste may be one of the most valuable creative advantages left. Not taste as polish, but as judgment: knowing what to keep, what to cut, and when imperfection says more than precision.” – Niccolo Montanari
Niccolo Montanari has been a VAEFF Guest Curator since 2016. He is the founder of Curation Hour, a platform that amplifies the voices of filmmakers through curated screenings with partner festivals, online features, and network building.
Cinema Village in New York City.

The Replicant
Director: Milli
Synopsis: A ballet of metallic humanoids, their shadows brushing and merging. Endlessly repeating. Bodies multiply in sensual loops. Sweat becomes mercury. The heat rises as the silhouettes make contact.
Cinema Village in New York City.

'In My Head'
Director: Lola Margrain
Synopsis: In In My Head, director and editor Lola Margrain turns an internal state into something physical. Made for musician Estelle Chen’s single, the film begins in a suspended interior: a sleeping body, a pool of water spreading across the floor, and a small bubble emerging from Estelle’s head. From there, we gradually slip beyond the confines of the room, moving through a swimming pool and into the landscapes of Yunnan, where flowers, water and natural forms begin to respond to the thought that has escaped her body.
Cinema Village in New York City.

Cliffs
Director: Beltran Gonzalez
Synopsis: An immersive film exploring the inner-worlds of divers.
Cinema Village in New York City.

Deusimar
Director: Brina Reis
Synopsis: Deusimar is a video teaser for Brega singer Totô de Babalong. Brega is a popular Brazilian music genre, born mostly in the north and in working-class urban areas. The word literally means “Tacky” in Portuguese and was originally an insult used by the middle and upper classes to look down on the genre. The video is inspired by the Brazilian legend of the mula SEM cabeça (the headless mule), a woman who transforms into a monstrous creature as punishment for forbidden desire. The story connects to Brega through its melodrama, tragedy, and excess. Deusimar carries a distinctly Latin American gesture, taking what colonial and patriarchal narratives marked as shameful (the popular, the feminine, and the “Low” culture) and turning it into a site of pride and aesthetic power.
Cinema Village in New York City.

Castle and Ruins
Director: Willy Hajil & Poeta Visual
Synopsis: This film depicts artist Abebe Bikila (BK) ten years on from the release of his landmark debut album and in the wake of his mother’s passing. The film is a metaphorical essay on history and identity, rendering the artist’s trials and cosmology through multiple points of views: a dancer rhythmically conjuring protection, a warrior in eternal conflict with others, and a pregnant mother imagining the life her son will one day lead.
Cinema Village in New York City.

A Day at the Resort
Director: Fabio De Frel
Synopsis: De Frel comes from a music-production background in Amsterdam, which naturally feeds into the way sound and image work together in his films. He’s drawn to different artistic mediums, and that curiosity shows in work that’s rich in colour, atmosphere and emotion. With a sharp eye for the small details of human behaviour, his films, whether fiction or documentary, are grounded in nuanced, believable characters. Having shot across the world, Fabio brings a thoughtful, well-rounded sensibility to storytelling, crafting films that feel carefully composed but never overworked.
Cinema Village in New York City.

Box with God
Director: Thomas Harrington Rawle
Synopsis: This music video for the latest single from genre-defying artist and producer Daisy Maybe, multimedia artist Thomas Harrington-Rawle, constructs a disquieting visual world where control is relinquished and identity dissolves. Working from a minimal environment, Rawle builds a system rather than a narrative, one in which bodies become vessels, faces are stripped away, and individuals are reorganised by an unseen force. What begins as a recognisable human space gradually mutates into something far more alien and collective.
Cinema Village in New York City.

In the Heart of the Flower Citadel
Director: Adam Muscat
Synopsis: In this film, artist-designer nil00 and filmmaker Adam Muscat dissolve the boundaries between fashion, cinema, and installation. Set within a fractured, celestial cityscape, anonymous figures leap and tumble through luminous structures, their movements carrying the viewer through moments of awe and unease. Wordless and immersive, the film unfolds as a study of light and darkness, embodiment and transcendence.
Cinema Village in New York City.

Rosalía (feat. Björk & Yves Tumor) - Berghain
Director: Nicolas Méndez
Synopsis: A black-clothed orchestra follows Rosalía as she goes about her day.
Cinema Village in New York City.

Mond - Bzns بزنس
Director: Ahmed Razeek
Synopsis: This film follows a group of young men moving as one, where tension builds through proximity, repetition and silent rules. What begins as play gradually shifts into something more unstable, as the group dynamic evolves and control starts to slip.
Cinema Village in New York City.

The Affair
Director: Matteo Mosterts
Synopsis: With The Affair, director Matteo Mosterts transforms Ferragamo’s iconic Hug Bag into the object of a dangerously seductive romance. Created for the Italian fashion house’s FW25 collection and produced by Florence and Habitant, the film unfolds as a sultry portrait of love, betrayal, and desire—where passion is heightened, loyalty is tested, and elegance never slips.
Cinema Village in New York City.

Let Them Dream Cake
Director: Kristyna Archer
Synopsis: Kristyna Archer’s latest AI-infused short, takes us into an opulent tea party where beauty becomes both feast and fever dream. Guests eat edible florals and sugar-dusted rose petals that dissolve into visions as time folds, cakes grow, and indulgence blurs into delirium.
Cinema Village in New York City.

Better in Denim
Director: Bethany Vargas
Synopsis: The instantly iconic GAP advertisement set to Kelis’ “Milkshake,” featuring girl-group KATSEYE, that took the world by storm.
Cinema Village in New York City.

Non Ad Locum.
Director: Amanda Lago
Synopsis: A woman, lost at night, takes shelter in an abandoned space — not as refuge, but as passage. In the dim light, the body tries to remember; the voice reappears as a fractured echo. A lost voice. A lost dance. A fallen body. Facing her own reflection, she encounters something both familiar and expelled, a double that carries what has been lost. Between silence and sound, gesture and word, she remains suspended in that fragile threshold where language begins, but does not yet fully form.
Cinema Village in New York City.

Obsession
Director: Ben Miethke
Synopsis: Music video for new single by Superpoze.
Cinema Village in New York City.

