For Hisense’s World Cup brand film, the brief was to create something more human than a traditional sponsorship story, with the brand present, but never standing in the way of the emotion.

Instead of telling another story about football creating champions, we focused on the millions of ordinary people who never became professional players, but carried what the game gave them into the rest of their lives.

The film follows three childhood friends, moving back and forth between past and present through cross-cutting, with their lighthearted recollections unfolding as voiceover. Memories of the football pitch gradually intersect with who they have become today. They never won the big game, and football never became their career. But it taught them resilience, ambition, friendship and the simple joy of coming back together. That idea became the heart of the film: a match may last 90 minutes, but we keep playing long after the final whistle.

Hisense products are woven naturally into the characters’ everyday lives rather than treated as separate product moments. Appliances also become part of the visual language connecting past and present, with transitions such as a childhood refrigerator cutting to the one in their home today, or an old television giving way to its present-day counterpart. In this way, the brand becomes part of the passage of time itself, present across different stages of their lives without interrupting the story.

To keep the story grounded in a real football culture, we pushed to shoot the childhood sequences on location in Mexico City, working with local casting and locations within a limited production budget. What we found there only reinforced the idea: children from very different circumstances sharing the same instinctive love for the game.

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CREDITS

Client: Hisense

Director: Boya Liu

Producer: Penny Peng

Project Manager: Qinru Wu

Creatives / Copywriters: Aliks Chen, Rossi Xiao

Director of Photography: Renny Leung

Gaffer: Kai Li

Production Designer: Peixuan Han

Art Director: Iris Huo

Still Photographer: Zengchang Li

Editor: Weichong Tang

Colorist: Sibo Xie

CAST

Mexico City: Maria Jose Izeta Ayala, Stefan Palomino Goszczynska, Aiden Liam Mbikang Orozco

China: Goncalves de Oliveiraluana, Adam Saunders Janech, Gemmeda Ebsa Uka

LOCAL PRODUCTION PARTNER: ICONIC STAR (LOS ANGELES)

Executive Producer: Christy Wang

Line Producer: Sharon Law

MEXICO CITY CREW

Local Line Producer: Alberto Ayala

Fixer: Maria Teresa Scotti Hodelin

1st AD: Fernando Garzafox

Gaffer: Sebastian Martinez

Key Grip: Alejandro Soria, Israel Martínez, Iván Lemus, Miguel Aguilar

Art Director: Alexia Blas

Wardrobe Stylist: Ziania Arroyo

Wardrobe Assistant: Ximena Linares

Makeup: Mayra Itzel Tenorio Diaz

Behind-the-Scene Photographer: Jose Salvador Nito Wong

Production Assistants: Alejandra Meza, Diego Carrera