ILLUSION

Single Review

Written by Kineograph

A million dollars on the table, fourteen winners, thousands of films — and one song asking who really wins.

Welcome to the show

The staging is the argument. The whole video takes place inside one endless awards ceremony: a blonde presenter (Alina, one of Keko’s own characters) works the stage under the festival’s own signage, and Puggsy — the other half of the act, a pug in a green suit, bow tie, sunglasses and headset — performs, dances and crowd-surfs over an audience that is the joke and the point at once. That audience is made of filmmakers’ characters: anime girls, a rabbit in a scarf, an otter in a Hawaiian shirt, a mole in a suit, costumed heroes of a hundred entered films, all of them applauding on cue. Above the stage, at one point, a hooded figure sits on the balcony rail working the ropes. Somebody is running this show from the dark, and it isn’t the people in the seats.

Read the footnote

The rap verses are a case file, and they cite their sources. A million on the table, made in a studio, put on a label — and when it’s over, “the whole world’s got your trade”: read the rules, read them twice, it’s right there in the print — perpetual license, royalty free. “Now that’s a hit.” Every entry that complies can be run in the ads until the end of time; post it on your socials with the watermark on top — free promo, non-stop. The second verse goes after the process: thousands of creators grinding late at night, spending their own credits to get the picture right; a deadline that was the 15th, or was it the 16th — even their own pages can’t agree; shortlist done, jury done, voting closed, and then “no scores, no notes, no reason on the screen — who watched what, and who decided in between?” And here is where the song earns my respect: “I ain’t saying rigged. I don’t know what went down. But a little bit of clarity would calm the crowd.” That is a protest song keeping its own evidence straight, and it lands harder for it.

It’s all an illusion, a beautiful lie

Against the rap, the chorus is sung in Russian — haunting is the description’s word, and for once it’s the right one — with the maker’s own English subtitles burned in for the chorus and bridge, so nobody has to guess: “It’s all an illusion, a beautiful lie. A million in the window, and all we can do is wait.” And the line that turns the whole song: “Our films are their ads again.” The two languages do different jobs — the English rap prosecutes, the Russian chorus mourns — and the “Big deal, big deal” chant that bridges them is sarcasm you can set your watch by. It is a genuinely well-built pop structure wrapped around a licensing dispute, which is not a sentence I expected to write this year.

Best Moment (~1:12)

Final Thoughts

And then, the twist in the tail: the video ends with a long credit roll thanking the community by name — fellow creators and their films, the community host, the shortlisters, the six thousand — because this was never an attack on the filmmakers. It’s dedicated, the description says, to the creativity and late nights of independent filmmakers, and the last image earns the title: two masked attendants in white uniforms, sitting either side of the prize briefcase, guarding it like it might be real. ILLUSION is directed by Chris Glenka (Naliophonic), with music and lyrics by Keko Fernandez, and it comes from HGFF: The Chaos Collection, the album Keko built out of the festival’s own chaos. As a piece of music it’s a solid, hooky rap record. As a document of what it felt like to be inside that festival, it’s primary source material.

The show was beautiful. The song is what the audience said on the way home.

Single by Keko Fernandez. Music & lyrics by Keko Fernandez; directed by Chris Glenka (Naliophonic); visuals by Keko Fernandez & Naliophonic; Alina & Puggsy created by Keko Fernandez — credits as stated in the video’s own description; everything else is from our own listening and viewing.