When Charli says ‘Music, Fashion, Film,’ she really means it. For her new single, Camera, she sort of moves away from those three pillars and instead goes ‘Lights, camera, action!’ Starring Vincent Cassel, the French actor who’s appeared in films as emblematic as La Haine, Irreversible, Black Swan or Eastern Promises, the black-and-white music video directed by Aidan Zamiri proves Charli’s obsession with cinema as they guide us through the behind-the-scenes process of moviemaking.
In just one week, on 24 July, the British artist is set to release her second album this year. After kicking off 2026 with Wuthering Heights, a record she composed for Emerald Fennell’s polarising adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s much-beloved novel, Charli is back at it again. In June, she released the cover artwork, a photo with three geniuses who’ve influenced her life and career: John Cale (from The Velvet Underground), Marc Jacobs, and Martin Scorsese. If you’ve been following Charli’s latest moves, you’ll see she’s been taking a particular interest in cinema: not only composing the soundtrack for a film, but also starring in several of them (from Pete Ohs’s Erupcja and Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex to her Aidan Zamiri-directed mockumentary The Moment). In Camera, Charli takes that interest one step further.
The music video shows the set of a movie or TV show. Vincent Cassel has just had a car accident. Scratched, angry and desperate, he tries to look for help (well, screaming at a Blackberry) but ends up getting ‘shot’ by Charli, who’s riding a camera. There are nods to La Haine, one of the French actor’s most popular movies, also shot in black and white, which caused quite an impression because of its depiction of violence.