Franka Potente - Believe (Run Lola, Run)

What this video is

Released in 1998–1999 as a promotional and soundtrack artifact of Tom Tykwer's landmark film Lola rennt, this video occupies a rare genre position: it is simultaneously a standalone pop music video, a film promotional vehicle, and an extension of the film's own visual grammar. The song 'Believe' — composed by Tykwer, Klimek, and Heil — functioned as both the film's lyrical emotional core and as an internationally…

Why it matters

A landmark example of film-music video hybridization in the late 1990s, 'Believe' demonstrates how arthouse European cinema could weaponize the music video format for both promotion and artistic extension. The video's extreme editing pace (1.92s avg shot length, 151 cuts) prefigures the hyper-cut…

The director

Tom Tykwer (born 23 May 1965, Wuppertal, West Germany) is a German film director, screenwriter, producer, and composer. He began making Super 8 films at age 11 and worked as a Berlin cinema projectionist before becoming programmer at the Moviemento. His…