Who directed Nirvana’s 1993 music video for “Heart-Shaped Box”?

Anton Corbijn directed Nirvana’s 1993 music video for “Heart-Shaped Box.”

The song appeared on In Utero and was released as the album’s lead single in August 1993. Corbijn, a Dutch photographer and filmmaker, created a surreal visual featuring religious imagery, a red-haired elderly man, a child in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, and other unsettling symbols.

The video’s imagery reflects the song’s disturbing and dreamlike atmosphere, though the exact meaning of Cobain’s lyrics has long invited interpretation. Corbijn had already built a major reputation through music photography and videos for prominent artists.

“Heart-Shaped Box” is sometimes confused with “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” whose video was directed by Samuel Bayer. Corbijn directed only the former. The video became one of Nirvana’s final major promotional films before the band ended in 1994.