The film imagines the struggles of Van Gogh, one of the most appreciated, yet controversial artists of his time, had he been a struggling artist in the context of social media today.

The movie starts with Van Gogh in the present, launching into painting with excitement and getting inspired by the world around him. As any enthusiastic aspiring artist, he shares his work on social media and continues to enjoy his art and time with his friends, like a regular guy. Things take a negative turn, as he starts receiving hate on social media. From here, the character slowly descends into madness. Intensified by the rhythm of hateful comments hitting his inbox, he reaches the pinnacle of insanity with the famous ear-cutting scene.

The ending is left open: crushed by the hate, Van Gogh, now an Art-store clerk, struggles with the decision of giving up his art for good.

Through the “Do your thing” global platform, ING encourages people to follow their passion freely, so when a brand study revealed that online hate keeps people from being themselves online and sharing their passion with the world, we wanted to fight the widespread phenomenon of cyberbullying.

We tapped into ING’s digital heritage to imagine the story of Van Gogh, one of the most controversial artists of his time. We started from the insight that if you let hate kill your thing, the world might miss out on the next great artist of the world. From here, we built our story to leave people pondering what the world would have missed, had Van Gogh given up on doing his thing because of criticism.

In the end, our film sends a simple message: The world can only have you once, so give it your best and don’t let hate ruin your thing.