2016 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

The film shows people in different parts of the world that were inflicted with natural and man-made disasters. Stories of various kinds of suffering are evident in their face expressions, eyes, movement, surroundings, and living conditions. The voice accompanying the scenes takes the viewer on a journey that stimulates empathy and compassion yet within a positive framework and background music: feelings of poverty and limited choices, intolerable burdens and homelessness are accompanied with an emotional uplift by showing how these sufferers cling to hope despite their helplessness and desperation. The film indirectly sheds the light on the importance of our contribution to that hope, and our role as viewers, humanitarians, and organizations to nurture it by building a world of acceptance, equality, and understanding that knows no boundaries. The film ends with smiling faithful faces, and a positive message of hope from Alwaleed Philanthropies that people worldwide can relate to: Amen Humanity

Creative Execution

The unity of inner emotions and the different appearance of our protagonists combined with their differing surroundings was the core of a powerful film for Alwaleed Philanthropies. We wanted faces telling their stories through themselves. We didn’t use shiny advertorial faces. What we looked for was character! It was important to find quite different looking people to communicate through their appearance the difference between them. We wanted the audience to get sucked into our film. So the camera was a Steadicam/ Stabilizer moving around our characters. Thats how we created the feeling of being seamless. with the floating, dynamic movement we definitely got the feeling we are aiming for. It was important also to find the right locations and angle to create scene transitions avoiding the use of CGI. We wanted to show the world in its different aspects. It‘s the same as with the cast. Through these two elements we have to build up difference between them, to unite them through the emotions and actions.