With holograms hovering everywhere around central Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital looks like a digitized fever dream from the future.
Joining the ranks of brands and artists who have shot darkly futuristic content in Kyiv, Three UK, one of the top five British telecom companies, features the city in a new ad released on Feb. 26.
Fantasizing about the way people will use mobile internet in the future, the commercial shows images of the Soviet-era Flying Saucer building, one of the Kyiv’s most iconic constructions, built on Lybidska Square back in 1971.
The commercial also features the Vernadsky National Library, a constructivist building located next to the interchange on Demiivska Street in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi district as well as the modernistic campus of Taras Shevchenko National University at the exhibition center VDNH.
The video follows a character traveling to a city of the future, who finds that with data speeds up to 100 times faster than 4G networks via fifth-generation technology, the future is only as bad as her internet connection.
“With Three 5G, it looks like a future full of supersonic downloads, lag-crushing gaming and holographic Lewis Capaldi (a Scottish singer) might not be so bad after all,” the company stated in an outline to the video.
Three UK is Britain’s fourth-biggest mobile network, with approximately 9.9 million customers. It provides 3G, 4G and 5G services in some areas.
This isn’t the first time successful singers and companies have filmed videos in Kyiv – many of them featuring the city’s Soviet architecture in narratives about dystopian futures.
Only this January, British singer Zayn Malik released the music video for his song “Flames” shot in Kyiy and featuring a group of cult members meeting the apocalypse in dilapidated concrete apartment blocks and matching white outfits.
A month earlier, in December, the British rapper Stormzy released a clip for the song “Audacity,” also featuring the Ukrainian city, where a masked group (this time in black) sets fires to abandoned buildings and pops motorcycle wheelies in a Purge-like rampage across the city.
Among other artists who chose Kyiv to shoot video clips or commercials are U.S singer Miley Cyrus and British DJ Mark Ronson, English rock band Foals, U.S. tech giant Apple, Italian denim brand Diesel, and French luxury goods company Dior.
