Dolce & Gabbana style the cast of Madonna’s short film ‘Confessions II’

Madonna defies the passage of time and returns to the dance floor in a 13-minute short, ‘Confessions II – The Film,’ directed by David Toro and Solomon Chase (Torso). Released today on her YouTube channel, the video precedes the release of her new album, ‘Confessions II’, on July 3- her fifteenth- which in turn symbolically picks up the baton from ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor,’ released in 2005: a return to her dance roots. That album topped the charts in 40 countries, selling around 10 million copies worldwide.

Dolce & Gabbana, the Italian fashion house with which the seven-time Grammy winner has a long-standing partnership, selected looks from recent and archive collections for the corsets and other stage costumes not only for the pop star, but also for the rest of the star-studded cast, which includes Julia Garner (the young actress from Ozark and The Americans, who is expected to play Madonna in a future biopic directed by the singer herself), as well as Gwendoline Christie, Kate Moss, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Rupert Grint, with a special appearance by Sabrina Carpenter, with whom Madonna took the stage at Coachella in April. The short closes with Lourdes Leon, the pop star’s daughter: “Cut Bitch!”. Madonna revealed that she co-wrote a song for the new album with her eldest daughter.

Filmed over the course of a month in Los Angeles, New York, and London, Confessions II – The Film had a tightly controlled premiere on Friday at the Tribeca Festival in New York: audience members were instructed to hand over their phones to prevent any leaks of information or images. “I don’t want to make meaningless music. I want to make music that is about something,” she said during the screening. “Dance music makes your body move and makes you feel the beat. It’s like connecting with the universe, connecting with other human beings.”

The short includes four previously unreleased tracks: ‘Good for the Soul,’ ‘One Step Away,’ ‘Read My Lips,’ and ‘Danceteria’- the latter named after the club that launched the singer in the 1980s- as well as the already available singles ‘I Feel So Free’ and ‘Bring Your Love.’ The video shows the queen of pop being chased by a squad of female robots armed with cameras as she moves from an apartment to a forest, where she dances with semi-naked women and men, from whose groins green laser beams emanate. Then Madonna gets behind the wheel of a car, heads to a nightclub and a packed toilet, where, together with celebrity friends, she sparks a dance party before taking the celebration back home.

Last week the singer promoted the new project with a surprise concert for 50,000 fans in Times Square. And she isn’t done with live performances: the pop star will join BTS and Shakira on stage at the World Cup final on 19 July at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, just outside New York.