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Welcome to the Shadow issue of Dazed. This season we’re delving into the dark, exploring the things we often try to hide or repress, both as individuals and as societies. Across these pages, you’ll meet a range of people who confront the darkness both inside themselves and out in the world in a variety of ways – channelling it into creativity, making sense of it through comedy, or allowing it to make them a little more empathetic.

As you’ll soon find out, many of these people are stars of the screen. Our cover stars include Yung Lean, who speaks to Charli xcx ahead of his feature-film debut in Romain Gavras’s Sacrifice; Chase Infiniti, fresh from her breakout role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, already being hailed as a modern classic; Rachel Sennott, showrunner and star of new series I Love LA; and Owen Cooper, the 15-year-old from Warrington whose unnerving performance as a boy who killed his classmate in Adolescence transfixed audiences around the globe. He speaks to us ahead of the release of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, in which he plays the young Heathcliff – another young man battling his monstrous inner demons.

Cooper joins a roster of young British actors helping to solidify the nation’s status as an international filmmaking hub, while rising director Luna Carmoon shares her fascinating (and more than a little perverse) cultural syllabus. Anthony Seklaoui photographs model of the moment Loli Bahia and the supremely elegant Dara Gueye in Jonathan Anderson’s debut men’s and women’s collections for Dior, fusing fashion and film noir in the process. Plus, Arthur Jafa unpacks his incendiary video art, which speaks to the age-old – yet ever-darkening – shadow across America. In the interview, Jafa reflects on the power of printed matter: “It’s material, but the ideas it contains can provoke, trigger or unleash.” If it’s not too lofty an ambition, we hope the ideas contained in this issue unleash something in you.

Ted Stansfield, Editor-in-Chief