Savvas Stavrou returns to his native Cyprus for his latest video for Jamie McDermott, aka The Irrepressibles, to visualise the themes of unrequired love and heartache in The Most Beautiful Boy.

Evocative imagery capturing the intense friendship of two young boys is counterpointed with the anguish of one of the boys, now an adult soldier. He is mourning the loss of his friend, but this 'present-day' scenario is more figurative than the journey into the past: the child's body he carries is a symbol of his loss, his pain is expressed through sharp movement.

Stavrou and his DoP Luciana Riso make excellent use of the island location too, spanning lush greens for the nostalgic sections of boyhood adventure, to the arid whites, and rocky beaches of the soldier's world.   

SAVVAS STAVROU:

It was important to capture the most genuine, unique and heartfelt unrequited love a boy can have for another boy.

"When I first heard this song by the Irrepressibles, I knew that it was special, that it came from a deeply personal place.

"Music that is charged with such emotional poignancy is rare. And I wanted to pay tribute to how much it moved me by making something equally personal - about love, about life, about what it means to be ‘a man’. As James Joyce said: “In the particular, lies the universal.”

"It was important for me to capture the most genuine, unique and heartfelt unrequited love a boy can have for another boy. The dreams we have when we are young, the innocence and power of our imagination, the way that is sometimes torn apart by the world. In a way, the soldiers here can be seen as metaphorical soldiers fighting in the everyday battle of our basic human right to love."