Tessa Thompson Directed a Lush, Ethereal Video for Arooj Aftab’s New Song

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Tessa Thompson just made her directorial debut with the dreamy, sapphic video for “Raat Ki Rani” by singer-songwriter Arooj Aftab.

The song is the first single off of Aftab’s newly announced album, Night Reign, which comes out on May 31. “Raat Ki Rani” translates from Urdu to “Queen of the Night,” but it’s also the name for night-blooming jasmine. Fittingly, the jazz musician told Rolling Stone that the song “is about a person whose allure, magnetism, and charisma floats through a beautiful evening garden party.”

“Interaction with the queen of the night feels unthinkable,” Aftab said in a press release obtained by Pitchfork. “Sometimes we must be content with an exchange of glances.”

The visual accompaniment to the song, which is just over six minutes long, perfectly encapsulates that vibe. Thompson told Rolling Stone that the video “is about the fantasies we have sometimes about people we encounter.”

“It’s about the way we come to life in dark spaces. It’s about how intoxicating something in bloom can be,” she told the magazine. “I don’t want to say much more because I am curious what people see in it. But it is also an homage to some films I am deeply influenced by.”

The video, largely shot in black and white, captures a meeting between two women on the set of a photoshoot. The handful of sequences in color are fantasy scenarios spurred by a moment of eye contact between the two. The pair embrace by the water with the New York City skyline in the background, elegantly pose for photographs, and gaze into each other’s eyes while lying next to each other. Both the song and the video feel lush and ethereal, and any queer person who’s imagined their entire life unfolding with someone on a first date will be able to instantly recognize the yearning that Aftab and Thompson capture so well.

Such a synergetic artistic collaboration makes complete sense when you consider how well the two know each other. Thompson told Rolling Stone that she isn’t even “sure how [Aftab] first came into my ears, but her music was instantly familiar and essential. Maybe I actually met her in a past life.”

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“She is a singular artist and human,” Thompson added. “She inspires me in the way anyone does when they are entirely authentic and unafraid of their own personhood.”

Though “Raat Ki Rani” marks Thompson’s directorial debut, it’s far from her first gay music video. Who could forget her collaborations with Janelle Monáe, appearing in the videos for “PYNK” and “Make Me Feel”?

As for Aftab, this marks her first solo release since her 2021 album Vulture Prince, which made her the first Pakistani woman to ever win a Grammy. In addition to a new album, she’ll be embarking on a tour of Europe and the U.S. later this year, starting with a performance at the Live Is Live festival in Belgium and concluding in Los Angeles next January.

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Originally Appeared on them.