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Queer music artists continue to shift the culture through visual storytelling. We’re honored to feature several of these tastemakers in our community during our exclusive music video block. Each artist brings something unique to the visual landscape that we are excited to amplify.
Moroccan-Canadian singer, songwriter and multidisciplinary artist El Mehdi fuses modern pop with North African influences into a magnetic, defiant and cathartic sound. With honey-laced vocals and a fearless vision, he crafts unmistakable music that transcends borders and genres. Moving between music, film, fashion and performance, his work explores identity and visibility through symbolism and cinematic storytelling. His debut EP SALAM pairs rich vocals and electronic textures with lush strings and Maghrebi sounds, turning shame into pride and vulnerability into power. On stage and in the studio, in front of and behind the camera, El Mehdi challenges social and cultural expectations, creating quasi-devotional worlds where the ancestral becomes radically future-facing and music becomes ritual. Pop that remembers where it comes from—without ever apologizing for where it is going.. Having returned from the hell prescribed for him, El Mehdi reclaims the narrative: he was never damned—he simply went to warm the tea.
El Film is a self-directed conceptual musical short by Moroccan-Canadian artist El Mehdi. Neither a traditional music video nor a conventional short film, it serves as a cinematic entry point into the universe of his debut EP SALAM, unfolding as a visual ritual where music, poetry, fashion, performance and cinema become one language.
Set within a Moroccan riad and unfolding through the traditional mint tea ceremony, the film transforms ancestral symbolism into a rite of passage—from silence to presence, from shame to agency. Beneath the anonymous gaze of a regimented all-male troupe, El Mehdi—an iconoclastic figure with an androgynous presence—fractures inherited ideas of masculinity and the sacred, allowing a fluid, liberated force to emerge.
Created by an openly queer artist in a cultural context where LGBTQIA+ people continue to face profound social stigma and legal repression, El Film is both deeply personal and radically tender. More than a music video, it frames beauty as resistance and offers a sanctuary for those too often asked to fragment, conceal or apologize for who they are.
Queer music artists continue to shift the culture through visual storytelling. We’re honored to feature several of these tastemakers in our community during our exclusive music video block. Each artist brings something unique to the visual landscape that we are excited to amplify.
Moroccan-Canadian singer, songwriter and multidisciplinary artist El Mehdi fuses modern pop with North African influences into a magnetic, defiant and cathartic sound. With honey-laced vocals and a fearless vision, he crafts unmistakable music that transcends borders and genres. Moving between music, film, fashion and performance, his work explores identity and visibility through symbolism and cinematic storytelling. His debut EP SALAM pairs rich vocals and electronic textures with lush strings and Maghrebi sounds, turning shame into pride and vulnerability into power. On stage and in the studio, in front of and behind the camera, El Mehdi challenges social and cultural expectations, creating quasi-devotional worlds where the ancestral becomes radically future-facing and music becomes ritual. Pop that remembers where it comes from—without ever apologizing for where it is going.. Having returned from the hell prescribed for him, El Mehdi reclaims the narrative: he was never damned—he simply went to warm the tea.
El Film is a self-directed conceptual musical short by Moroccan-Canadian artist El Mehdi. Neither a traditional music video nor a conventional short film, it serves as a cinematic entry point into the universe of his debut EP SALAM, unfolding as a visual ritual where music, poetry, fashion, performance and cinema become one language.
Set within a Moroccan riad and unfolding through the traditional mint tea ceremony, the film transforms ancestral symbolism into a rite of passage—from silence to presence, from shame to agency. Beneath the anonymous gaze of a regimented all-male troupe, El Mehdi—an iconoclastic figure with an androgynous presence—fractures inherited ideas of masculinity and the sacred, allowing a fluid, liberated force to emerge.
Created by an openly queer artist in a cultural context where LGBTQIA+ people continue to face profound social stigma and legal repression, El Film is both deeply personal and radically tender. More than a music video, it frames beauty as resistance and offers a sanctuary for those too often asked to fragment, conceal or apologize for who they are.