Sometimes an artist and their director go beyond just making a music video. Sometimes that video becomes its own entity, a piece of visual media that lives within its own short film universe. This is exactly what happened with APACALDA’s darkened and brooding “She’s Not Coming.”
Directed by the award-winning Maïlis—an emerging Montreal-based filmmaker, art director, and production designer known for her visually rich storytelling—the video was shot in Georgia, Eastern Europe, near APACALDA’s motherland of Romania, and follows a religiously pious woman who decides to end it all.
The gorgeous landscaped cinematography of a stark Georgia brings to mind the work of Terrence Malick, as well as the few intimate moments that set the tone of APACLADA’s moonless psych-pop. The music begins with a haunting acapella and slowly, as the woman walks through her hometown and claims forgiveness from her god, builds into a trance-like, yet restless piece of coldwave with elements of dreamy shoegaze.
“I write these songs as an extension of healing—I want to be a medium. I often feel others’ pain and I want to express it in honour of them,” APACALDA (real name, Cassandra Angheluta) says.
APACALDA is joined by the dynamic FHANG duo of Mishka Stein and Sam Woywitka on co-production, gritty guitar riffs, and hypnotic synths. “She’s Not Coming,” also marks the announcement of APACALDA’s upcoming album There’s a Shadow In My Room and It Isn’t Mine, out sometime in 2025.
