Ugo Fritsch.
What do Camille Cottin and the European rave scene have in common? ‘Jetski’, the latest video by Promis3, directed by Nails Guiguet, brings them together in a sharp, queer fable of exclusion and transformation. Set in a hyper-coded luxury ski resort, the film follows a journey from rejection to radical metamorphosis, where anger becomes a creative force and invisibility turns into power – blurring the lines between club culture, cinema and political storytelling.
‘Jetski’ presents itself as a queer, futuristic fable. How did this story of rejection, escape, and metamorphosis come about?
Promis3: It started from a very simple feeling: being in a space where you’re not supposed to belong. Somewhere exclusive, snobbish, where your presence is looked down on. From there, we wanted to follow that feeling all the way through. Not just rejection, but what comes after. Instead of disappearing, the characters get kicked out and transform. The “fable” aspect came naturally; it allowed us to push that emotional arc into something more physical, more radical. It’s really about what happens when people who are made invisible come back in a form that can’t be ignored anymore.
And how did your collaboration, the three of you, begin?
Promis3: It made sense quite quickly. We previously released already on Naïla’s first CDLF compilation and stayed in touch, and performed on her CDLF event. Naïla was already working between film and club culture, and building that bridge through CDLF. We played ‘Jetski’ the first time on the CDLF HÖR takeover, where Naïla invited us.
Naïla Guiguet: The desire to direct a music video actually came quite late, almost unexpectedly. With my two practices — DJ and label founder on one side, screenwriter and director on the other — it might have seemed obvious, but it took me time to want to bring them together in that way. It was a first, and I really hope not the last. Fiction filmmaking usually involves very long production timelines, whereas music videos offer a kind of immediacy that’s incredibly exciting – almost exhilarating — along with a great deal of creative freedom.
With ‘Jetski,’ I loved being able to translate into images all the emotions the track had sparked in me. Promis3 already had a very strong visual identity, a highly performative approach to music, and a unique stage presence — especially with their use of live vocals, which is quite rare in rave contexts. For a first music video, it felt like the perfect match.
Why did you choose such a highly coded setting as a luxury ski resort to tell this story?
Promis3: Because it’s a space with very clear rules. A luxury ski resort is about control, appearance, class: who belongs and who doesn’t. It’s polished, but also quite rigid socially. That makes it a perfect place to introduce something disruptive. You can read it almost like a closed system. And once something doesn’t fit into that system, the reaction is immediate.
Ugo Fritsch.
At what point did you decide to push the video into something more surreal and almost fantastical?
Promis3: That shift was always part of the idea. We wanted to start in something very recognisable, a performance, a room, a social dynamic, and then slowly break away from that. The turning point is the moment they’re kicked out. After that, reality starts to loosen. The disruption scene opens something, and from there it becomes possible for subjects to transform, for the body to change. It’s less a sudden switch than a gradual slide into something else.
The final transformation is very striking. What does this hybrid, half-human, half-machine figure represent for you?
Promis3: For us, it represents a refusal to adapt to the rest. After rejection, the characters do not adapt to fit in; they come back altered, excessive, harder to categorise. The hybrid body is made from the very elements of the space that rejected them: ski debris and instruments. So it becomes a reclaimed being, something assembled out of violence but turned into energy. It is both vulnerable and powerful, both damaged and inventive. That tension was essential. We wanted the final figure to feel like a new mode of existence.
Is this metamorphosis a form of revenge, a kind of armour, or a new way of existing? Why use a “monstrous” aesthetic to talk about emancipation?
Promis3: It is all three, but above all it is a new way of existing. There is definitely revenge in it, in the sense that anger is not suppressed; it is redirected. There is armour too, because the transformation creates protection, a shell, a force field. But what interested us most was the possibility that emancipation does not always look harmonious or reassuring. Sometimes it looks excessive, impure, even monstrous. We wanted to reclaim that. The so-called monstrous can be a site of freedom, because it escapes the demand to be readable, pleasing, or acceptable.
Ugo Fritsch.
Naïla, your work in cinema, particularly ‘Dustin,’ presented at Cannes Critics’ Week – already explores bodies, nightlife and queer communities. How do these themes extend into ‘Jetski?’
Naïla Guiguet: Much like in ‘Dustin,’ I wanted to stage queer bodies in their full power — to sublimate them while also grounding them in something human, without erasing what might be perceived as deviant or unsettling. To me, monstrosity doesn’t lie in the bodies themselves, but in the way they are perceived.
Promis3’s bodies exist in multiple in-between spaces, at points of friction, to the extent that they almost become monstrous — but not in a frightening way. It’s more of a projection: what anger and a deep sense of injustice can generate when pushed too far. The message was very clear to me: don’t play with us. We deserve to be seen, heard, and loved. And in a way, I find the real monster in the video is the crowd — that cold, normative social body. That’s the tension I wanted to create: to shift perception, and show that everything is about energy, emotion, and feeling, rather than appearance.
Your writing is often very sensory and grounded in reality. What did the music video format allow you to do differently?
Naïla Guiguet: Precisely to move away from realism. The format allowed me to embrace excess — something more baroque, more “too much.” Where cinema often demands a certain narrative coherence, here I could construct a series of contrasting tableaux without having to justify them in a conventional way. In just three minutes, we move through very different atmospheres, and that freedom to navigate between them was incredibly stimulating.
As a DJ and founder of your own label CDLF, your perspective is also shaped by club culture. How does this dual practice influence your direction?
Naïla Guiguet: I think it has allowed me to develop a more playful relationship to filmmaking. For a long time, I saw cinema as a very serious space, almost rigid, where intellectual reflection had to dominate. But through music and the club, I discovered how powerful — and necessary — it is to make people dance, to create joy and euphoria. Today, I strongly believe that entertainment and critical thinking are not opposed. You can create work that is both political and emotionally engaging while still being accessible and joyful. My relationship to the body, to movement, to collective energy — all shaped by club culture — has definitely influenced the way I approach directing.
Ugo Fritsch.
Promis3, your music blends rave, eurotrance, and queer club culture – how would you describe your visual universe alongside your sound?
Promis3: We always gravitate towards bigger-than-life situations when it comes to concepting the visual aspect. We like dynamic oppositions: if we show beauty, we also like to show ugly; if we embody serenity, we also like to embody violence, etc. Our music is intended in an over-the-top way sometimes, which correlates strongly with our need to exaggerate the visual reality.
Do you think about your tracks from the outset as narrative or cinematic objects? With ‘Jetski,’ did you want to push the visual dimension of your project even further?
Promis3: Yes, definitely. Even when a track begins with an energy or a hook, we usually think about the imagery quite quickly, what kind of visual mood it belongs to, what kind of image it carries, and what kind of concept it could generate visually. With ‘Jetski’, that instinct was even stronger because the title is already such a clear visual object. We started very literally, thinking about jetskis, and then somehow that shifted to snow scooters, which opened up the mountain setting. From there, it naturally evolved into this ski resort world, which is actually completely disconnected from what you’d expect from something called ‘Jetski’. We were laughing about it with Premier Cri at some point: the track is called ‘Jetski’, but the whole story takes place in the middle of winter, ends in a monster transformation, and there’s not a single jetski in sight.
How did you concretely work together, who brought what at the beginning: an image, an emotion, a narrative idea?
Promis3: At the beginning, we shared a few different directions with Naïla and the team, more like moods and concepts than a fixed story. There was the idea of a human jetski as a hybrid being, something more like a luxury resort narrative in the Swiss Alps, and also a more monster-driven, almost yeti-like concept. Naïla connected with several of those ideas and started combining them into something more structured. From there, it became a real back-and-forth, refining the narrative, the tone, and direction.
The production then really elevated everything. We were able to shoot at Maxim’s in Paris, which became this almost surreal, ultra-posh ski chalet, and then in the French Alps for the exterior scenes. Naïla directed the project, but it was a very collaborative dynamic. We appreciated that we were able to be closely involved throughout, especially on editing, mood, styling, and locations. It was a very fluid exchange between everyone.
Ugo Fritsch.
Did you have to make compromises, or did everything come together quite instinctively?
Promis3: Yes, definitely, it’s kind of inevitable in cinematic projects. At the beginning, everything lives on moodboards, and it’s always very ambitious. You imagine everything super big like a full James Bond-style pursuit on snow scooters, heavy VFX, and an endless amount of shots and looks.
Then, step by step, you’re confronted with the reality of production: budget, time, logistics, and you realise you can’t do everything. So it becomes a process of refining: deciding what’s essential and how to translate those ideas in a smarter, more realistic way. In that sense, compromises are constant and they’re also part of shaping the final result. That said, between us and Naïla, it didn’t feel like compromise in a creative sense. She was really open to dialogue and our input, especially on things like styling, mood and editing, where we had a clear vision as well. So it stayed collaborative throughout, more about adjusting the scale than changing the core ideas.
Ugo Fritsch.
The video builds a strong sense of tension. How did you construct this progression from invisibility to explosion?
Promis3: At first, the characters are there, but they’re not really seen for who they are. That tension builds until it turns into rejection. From that point on, the film moves into something more intimate, where anger can finally surface. The destruction scene is key because it marks a shift: the moment they stop accepting that treatment. After that, everything speeds up towards transformation. The arc moves from being overlooked, to release, to coming back in a form that can’t be ignored.
The destruction scene feels like a release. Do you see it as a political gesture? Is it important for you to transform anger into creative energy, especially within queer narratives?
Promis3: Yes, definitely. The scene feels like a release, but it’s also something more intentional than that. In queer culture, a lot of creation comes from intense emotions: rejection, desire, love, frustration, anger. You see it everywhere, in music, fashion, film. There’s a long history of turning those experiences into something expressive and shared.
For us, the destruction scene sits in that space. It’s not about destruction for its own sake, but about what you do with that energy. Anger can either stay inside you, or you can transform it into something else. In ‘Jetski,’ that moment is a turning point. Everything that was oppressive or limiting becomes material for something new. So yes, it’s political in that sense, it shows that transformation, and the idea that even negative emotions can be redirected into something powerful and creative.
Ugo Fritsch.
How did the collaboration with Camille Cottin come about?
Naïla Guiguet: I met her around the release of ‘The Innocent’ by Louis Garrel. She had been struck by the character of Clémence, played by Noémie Merlant, and while researching it, she found out that I had contributed significantly to writing that character. She also realised that I was a DJ. We ended up meeting shortly after, somewhat by chance, and immediately formed a strong connection, with a shared desire to work together. We actually have other projects in development.
‘Jetski’ felt like a way to begin collaborating without pressure — almost like a playground, a first shared experience shaped only by positive energy. And it was incredible. We feel very lucky to have worked with her on this. Her presence brings visibility to the project, and helps shine a light on queer artists and musical aesthetics that exist outside mainstream pop standards.
Her character is subtle but essential. What does she represent in the story? Does she act as a witness, a form of solidarity, or a turning point?
Naïla Guiguet: Initially, she was meant to play a more antagonistic role — almost a “mean waitress” figure. But very quickly, it became clear that it was more interesting to position her as an ally. She shares a similar social position to the group — they are both subjected to the same structures of power and symbolic violence. That creates a form of implicit solidarity, almost political. It becomes an alliance of the marginalised against the arrogance of the powerful — a way of expressing the idea of intersecting struggles. In such a codified environment, that gesture of solidarity becomes quietly subversive.
The styling clearly follows the transformation – how did you approach this evolution from control to something more organic and hybrid?
Promis3: The styling was conceived as part of the narrative, not as something added on top of it. At the beginning, the styling is more controlled, polished, and in line with the environment. As the story unfolds, they become less disciplined, more torn, more unstable, gradually moving towards a post-human transformation. The idea was that the costumes shouldn’t just dress the body, but reflect its mutation. That evolution was key to making the transformation feel believable.
To what extent do the costumes become an extension of the body – or even of the machine?
Promis3: We see clothing as an extension of the body. It says a lot about identity, about where you place yourself, about how you want to be seen, the scene or world you want to be part of. In the video, that evolution is quite direct. At the beginning, we’re trying to fit into that high society world, so the looks are more polished, more in line with the setting. Once we’re kicked out, it shifts and the styling becomes more raw, more disrupted, closer to us. Then the fur look comes in as a kind of reset. It marks a return of confidence, like something is building before the transformation. And in the end, everything merges into that hybrid figure, where those norms no longer matter, and the body carries all the stages it’s been through, including the tension and the violence, to arrive at that final, monstrous form.
Ugo Fritsch.
How do you represent queer and feminist struggles without becoming overly didactic? Do you still see the music video as a political space today?
Naïla Guiguet: I do; however, I always like to look at life through a lens of humour. The struggles are real, but the way we cope should not always be that serious. Making a music video about a ski monster isn’t that serious either, but it does tell you a queer story that holds a powerful message. I think for me with this project, it was important to bring this subject matter in a fun and entertaining way rather than a heavy or loaded vibe.
And finally, ‘Jetski’ is released on Comme Dans Les Films, Naïla’s label. How does the label’s vision and identity shape or support a project like this?
Promis3: CDLF was the ideal home for ‘Jetski’ because the label is built precisely around freedom, inclusion, self-expression, and a dialogue between music and cinema. It is not just a classic label for releasing tracks; it is a platform for projects that need visual ambition and conceptual space. Since CDLF already embraces festive, queer, and creative approaches, it made it possible for ‘Jetski’ to exist in a way that feels fully coherent: as both a club release and a cinematic video.
photography. Ugo Fritsch
fashion. Nikita Vlassenko
talent. Promis3 + Naïla Guiguet
production. Premier Cri
interview. Manon Pelinq
