Covid, migration, the energy crisis … During the last years many topics turned into irreconcilable differences – resulting in deep rifts, which even affected friends and families. While every opinion is important, they should never divide us. In our film, we turned a typical apartment building into a reflection of a divided society. We dive into all the recent hot topics, reliving the last few years of dividedness in only four minutes. We accompany our protagonists on their journey through their emotional dejection, experiencing the sense of heaviness a single word can leave behind. As we see opinions clash, which makes us feel like the world is falling right beneath our feet our story still manages to see a spark of hope, climaxing in the sentence: “Can we talk?”.

At Christmas the grocery store PENNY also tends to the emotional needs of its customers. At our stores, all opinions, people and their disputes meet. PENNY is the neighborhood store that stands for closeness and community. So, this year’s Christmas message speaks from the heart of the brand.

The biggest challenge was to create authentic and relatable scenes, and to avoid superficial box-ticking of current societal divisions. Additionally, we didn’t want to decide what’s “wrong” or “right”. While we aimed to develop a look that shows the depression and division people are experiencing, we also wanted to provide a message that moves people.

Covid, migration, the energy crisis … During the last few years many topics turned into irreconcilable differences – resulting in deep rifts, which even affected friends and families. PENNY is the neighborhood market that stands for closeness and community. So, this year’s Christmas message speaks from the heart of the brand: While every opinion is important, they should never divide us.

In comparison to most other Christmas ads our goal was to develop a look that shows the depression and division people are experiencing. We went for a strong realistic look supported by desaturated colors and lighting, while following the rifts as central elements. They get interpreted in many ways appearing on all kinds of textures. To make them look more organic, we combined constructed rifts and VFX. For example, the cracking eggs, the peeling wallpaper and the shattering piano keys were all constructed right on set. With the VFX team destruction was further enhanced and embellished to give it a depressingly real final aesthetic, which was still able to become hopeful and bright with the final message of the film: “Can we talk?”.