Delivery drivers are the unsung heroes of our time. This video puts them centre stage

Ilia Mazo Spring’s Servant

Ilia Mazo is a musician, poet, and artist capturing the melancholic beauty of Russian life. He has a gift for finding sincere stories in the most mundane of places: from a non-descript housing block in his video game It’s Winter, to the route of a delivery courier in his new music video, Spring’s Servant. Directed by Ann Asmus, the clip stars Chyngyz Kalberdiev, an actor, taxi driver, musician, and courier. In the video, we follow Kalberdiev as a food delivery courier through the streets of Moscow — but his role is not as straightforward as it seems.

“Delivery couriers are the true heroes of our times. When angels in Wim Winders’ classic Heaven Over Berlin had to visit Berlin in the 1980s, they picked black coats and hats to merge with thousands of similarly dressed men. If an angel had to visit Moscow in 2020, they would certainly pick the alias of a delivery courier,” the creators explain. “No one would ask a courier where they are from, why no one has ever seen them, why they don’t have family, friends, or work experience. Couriers are completely anonymous. They all wear identical bright clothing, but that just diverts away attention. The couriers themselves are a mystery. Why? There are a lot of clues: from xenophobia to corporave slavery to our own mystical interpretation.”

Listen to the Spring’s Servant EP here

Text: Anastasiia Fedorova