When Yael Naim read in an interview that the last song to make Belgian singer-songwriter Paul Van Haver, aka Stromae, cry, was her track Coward, she invited the Belgian singer-songwriter—alongside filmmaker brother Luc Junior Tam and director Martin Scali—to use the song for his directorial debut. Here, the director trio explain the story behind the video:

“The video tells the story of an old woman trying her best to get through a difficult time in her life. A former superhero now retired, our heroine is in denial of her ageing, not completely accepting of the physical changes that are happening to her. 

“The video questions the feeling of cowardliness, illustrated by our heroine’s refusal to accept her own reality—one forcing her to start a new stage in her life. It also questions the thin subjective line that separates courage from cowardliness and vice versa. To what extent can her relentlessness be seen as courage? Or is it simply the fear of the future? 

“Choosing a superhero as the principal character allowed us to address the antithesis of cowardliness, because by definition a superhero is never a coward. It also allowed us to stick to Yael Naim’s writing, which evokes the feeling of cowardliness that we can all experience when we’re confronted with serious steps in our lives.”