The last time we featured the work of director Maximilian Niemann he was guiding us through a blood-soaked zombie-filled post-apocalyptic world in his adrenaline-fuelled interactive short Five Minutes. Returning to the world of audience participation for his latest directorial project Next To You, an interactive music video to launch German rapper Kontra K’s latest album Labyrinth, the filmmaker once again empowers his audience by letting them cut between the two timelines in which his story takes place.

Click on the image to launch the interactive video

Described as an ‘addictive mystery-solving experience’, Next To You follows a fisherman who finds himself at the centre of a crime scene and begins to explore what has caused such carnage. As viewers join in the investigation they are invited to switch between the past and the present by using the spacebar or tapping on their phone screen and depending on the clues they reveal, the video can have three different endings. 

The interaction here may not feel as complex as Niemann’s previous work, where you were asked to perform on-screen tasks under the strain of time-restrictions, but once again his inventive approach has created a project which feels like an important experiment in breaching the restrictions of linear storytelling and it will be interesting to see if the techniques employed here could work outside of the music video format.

You can view the video here and read more about the project at unit9.com