Best Music Video – “Avicii – Heaven” (Sweden)

Title: Avicii – Heaven
Runtime: 5 min
Country: Sweden
Director: Levan Tsikurishvili
Placement: Best Music Video
Competition: September 30, 2019

Synopsis: The video to the track “Heaven” from Avicii. Directed by filmmaker Levan Tsikurishvili, the video is a gorgeous combination of images of Tim Bergling from their last visit to Ille Saint Marie in Madagascar in 2016 during the filming of True Stories and a second visit that Tsikurishvili made after Tim’s death to honor his legacy.On the banks of Louisiana, fierce Indigenous women are ready to fight—to stop the corporate blacksnake and preserve their way of life. They are risking everything to protect Mother Earth from the predatory fossil fuel companies that seek to poison it.

(Tim and Chris Martin wrote and recorded “Heaven” in 2014, with Tim producing the final version in 2016.) In a statement about the video, Tsikurishvili wrote: “I have been working with Tim since about 2013. During these years, we made 8 music videos, 3 concert movies and 2 documentaries together. In 2016, right after his last show, Tim, Tim’s childhood friend Awat, and I spent 19 beautiful days in Madagascar, llle Saint Marie. We spoke about everything, laughed, played monopoly, hung out with lemurs, and explored the entire island together. Now, two-and-a-half years later, I returned to the island to remember Tim, to honor his legacy, and to recreate the memories that will stay with us forever.”

This video is a collection of Tsikurisvili’s smartphone videos plus some parts of unused material from the documentary Avicii: True Stories and newly shot footage. He also created additioanl 3D animations in order to recreate images illustrating private moments for which there was not video.