TNMK. Domy (Homes)
Produced before the war, released on the second day of the invasion: a music video that became a prophecy and a testament to everything Ukraine fights to protect.
RocknLight was approached by Ukrainian hip-hop legends TNMK and Crimean Tatar singer Elvira Sarykhalil to produce a music video commissioned by Crimea Platform, for a song Domy (Homes) based on a poem by Serhiy Zhadan.
Zhadant wrote the text back in 2015, for the theatre production dedicated to Crimea and the people forced to leave their homes. The song carried a specific and painful weight: for the Crimean Tatar people, displacement is not a metaphor but a lived reality, repeated across generations. The premiere was planned for 26 February, the Day of Crimean Resistance to Russian Occupation.
On 24 February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The video was released two days later, into a world in which its every image had become unbearably literal.
RocknLight developed the concept and video direction, produced and filmed it, weaving together filmed footage with sand animation created by Kateryna Dzyuba. Each line of Zhadan's poem found its echo in allegorical visuals — homes lost, landscapes erased, identities under siege.
Created before the war, the video spoke the language of the war from its very first frame. What had been conceived as a reflection on Crimean Tatar displacement became, overnight, a reflection on Ukraine itself: on a whole country defending its existence, its culture, and the right to call a place home.
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