Oxfam Brings Home Yemen Crisis by Blowing Up Food

Academy Films director Billy Boyd Cape directed Oxfam’s latest film to raise awareness of the ongoing war and resulting famine in Yemen. The conflict there has left 14 million people facing famine.

Billy said: “Oxfam came with the brief of slow-mo destruction of food but there were multiple layers we wanted to try to communicate: The lack of food, the war and the millions that this is affecting.

“We wanted to keep it very direct and simple. Also not make it feel like the food photography we’ve become familiar with in M&S style advertising.

“Instead we aimed to replicate the visceral atmosphere of war through the destruction. Make it truly feel like an airstrike occurring on the ground in Yemen. Then abstracting this further through sound, music and lighting.

“The most shocking thing to me was how under-reported the crisis is. I’ll get a BBC News bulletin every day about an American shooting, but never that the entire nation of Yemen is being ripped apart. So we really needed to grab people’s attention, educate and relay the importance as quickly as we could.”