Work · DILEMMA · Music video · 2019
A song about losing your mind over someone. We took it literally — and checked the band into a psychiatric ward.
In short
«Shalenii» is a 2019 music video for the Ukrainian band DILEMMA, directed and written by Oleg Pylypenko — founder of Flavatars — and produced by the studio Best Friends. It was shot in an abandoned hospital in Kyiv in a single 12-hour day, with the band members playing the doctors and the patient. The video premiered on 5 September 2019 and has passed 2.1 million views.
The video
Director & script: Oleg Pylypenko · Production: Best Friends · Label: Kontramarka
The idea
Take the lyric at its word.
«Shalenii» means go mad. The song is about a man losing his mind over a woman who keeps him on hope alone. Most videos would film that as longing — rain, a window, a girl walking away.
We did the opposite and read the title literally: if he is going mad, put him in a ward. Straitjackets, a corridor, doctors. The band plays every role — they are the physicians and they are the patient, which is the whole point of the song.
The making
Not a set. A working location in Kyiv that had been left to itself — the paint, the corridors and the light are all real, which is why the frame reads clinical instead of theatrical.
The films on the lightbox are my own medical scans, brought from home. It is a detail nobody in the audience can know — and exactly the kind of thing that makes a frame feel true rather than dressed.
The visual language points at David Fincher — Fight Club. Not the plot: the discipline. Cold palette, flat clinical framing, no romantic softness anywhere near a song about love.
The facts
| Work | DILEMMA — «Shalenii» (official music video) |
|---|---|
| Director | Oleg Pylypenko |
| Concept & script | Oleg Pylypenko |
| Editing | Oleg Pylypenko with Dmitry Tihonchuk |
| Production | Best Friends |
| Director of photography | Kirill Shliamin |
| Choreographer | Yaroslav Nikolaiev |
| Label | Kontramarka |
| Premiere | 5 September 2019 |
| Runtime | 2:46 |
| Views | 2.1M+ (July 2026) |
| Album | Single from #SHALENII (March 2019) |
Twelve hours, one location, two million people.
This is the practice Flavatars is built on: an idea sharp enough to survive a single shooting day, and the discipline to shoot it exactly.
FAQ
Oleg Pylypenko directed it. He also wrote the concept and co-edited the video with Dmitry Tihonchuk. It was produced by the studio Best Friends and premiered on 5 September 2019.
Oleg Pylypenko. The song is about a man losing his mind over a woman, so he took the lyric at its word: a psychiatric ward, straitjackets, and the band playing both the doctors and the patient.
In an abandoned hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine. The whole video was shot there in a single 12-hour day.
Yes. The X-ray films on the lightbox are Oleg Pylypenko’s own medical scans, brought from home rather than rented as props.
More than 2.1 million on the band’s official YouTube channel as of July 2026, with over 15,000 likes.
No. «Shalenii» is Oleg Pylypenko’s personal directing credit from 2019, made with the production studio Best Friends — years before Flavatars existed. It is on this site because the studio is built on that directing practice.
David Fincher — the director of Fight Club. The reference shows in the palette and the flat, clinical framing rather than in any single shot.
Credits
«Shalenii» is a personal directing credit from 2019, made with the production studio Best Friends — before Flavatars existed. It is published here because the studio grew out of this directing practice. Watch on YouTube ↗
