Mumford & Sons - Lover Of The Light

What this video is

Released November 2012 at the commercial apex of the folk-revival movement, 'Lover of the Light' sits within a moment when British indie-folk acts — Mumford & Sons chief among them — were achieving arena-scale success while retaining acoustic credibility. The video's casting of Idris Elba, then globally prominent following Luther's Golden Globe win, as both director and sole on-screen subject was a widely noted…

Why it matters

This video is a landmark within folk-revival music video history for two reasons: it fully decouples artist from visual representation, and it elevates the format to short-film status through a documented celebrity directorial collaboration. It anticipates the post-2012 trend of prestige narrative…

The director

Idris Elba is a British actor internationally recognised for roles in The Wire and Luther (Golden Globe winner, 2012), for whom this video marked his directorial debut. Dan Cadan is a British screenwriter and filmmaker. The two co-directed the project after…