The filmmaker presents an optimistic future filled with vibrant colours and of course, Salvatore Ferragamo fashion.
Cinema icon Wim Wenders weaves a new story with Salvatore Ferragamo in A Future Together. The short film captures the Autumn-Winter 2021 Ferragamo collection, transforming it into a statement on the possibilities of fashion in the future.
Wenders is blessed with an uncanny ability to tell a story without the need for dialogue, using sweeping panoramic shots and the use of vibrant colour. The filmmaker’s resume includes making the ultimate American road movie with Paris, Texas despite, in fact, being German. Here, Wenders turns his lens to new subject matter to highlight Salvatore Ferragamo’s new-season fashion.
The film features Gaia Girace and musician Felix Sandman,with work behind the editorial images from Vito Fernicola. Carefully stylistic, the film balances the future and present day.
A Future Together
The result is a 2-minute film called A Future Together. It stars Gaia Girace as an on-screen director making her own sci-fi film. The camera follows Girace as she accidentally collides with the sound guy played by Felix Sandman. This sparks a fledgling romance that proceeds throughout the rest of the film. The result is a sweet tale of glances and smiles, leading us through a love story.
Wenders explains the challenge was finding a concise way of telling a story in just two minutes. Faced with this constraint, he had to quickly spell out a tale in line with the brand’s vision.
The commercial opens with Girace shouting the only spoken word of the mini-film, “action” and we see the cast weaving through multicoloured posts. Dressed in clothes of pink, white, lilac, and green against a floor of blue. The film then cuts to different scenes of the two working together and getting closer. Shots of the fashion are also in between, further building the futuristic aspect.
Shown from above, a Wenders trademark technique, the camera sweeps around to show the futuristic background of the Milan Convention Centre, designed by architect Mario Bellini. As a location, its undulating, fluid shapes fitted Wenders’s vision exactly.
Production
“If you had time to develop a real story, I could think of a few solutions. But in a commercial, you don’t have time, which made it simpler; the most direct path to a positive attitude was to introduce a love story. Ferragamo was a bit amazed at first, but then they understood it was a clear and uncomplicated way to avoid the trap of dystopia.” – Wim Wenders
Avoiding dystopia was the filmmakers biggest challenge. Ferragamo wanted an optimistic take on the future. This is difficult as the future is generally seen as bleak and gloomy. However, Wenders worked around this by implementing the timeless genre of romance,
“When the cards are stacked up against you and you have to fight many obstacles, the result can achieve an extra aura of beauty. This was definitely the case at our Ferragamo shoot.”
Check out A Future Together here:
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