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 and live life authentically, 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.

Although in recent years mental health has become an important topic of discussion and the pandemic has led to an increase in mental discomfort, the topic is still ignored in Romania. Cyberbullying is a phenomenon that can lead to depression, yet government programs and NGOs mostly deal with how it affects children and teens. Our research shows however that this issue also gravely affects young adults and makes them hesitant to express themselves online, for fear of online harassment. Therefore, we needed to find a surprising angle to talk about an issue that is culturally not talked about.

The casting was instrumental to the idea. The film gravitates around one character and relies on closeups and conveying emotion through body language. Looking deeply into Van Gogh’s youth portraits and life, we searched for a mix of optimism and potential to go fully dark. We needed a versatile actor that could display a wide range of emotions and take the viewer on for the journey without using words. Physical resemblance was also important, as we needed our audience to get the hint about the character reference and relate to the story of Van Gogh. We found our guy from a pool of 23 actors, after spending ample time with all candidates. Apart from acting out scenes from the script, the director had conversations with shortlisted actors about their views on art, in order to find the personal triggers that would help to draw out the most authentic performance.