Unexpected
Promo video for the Tretyakov Gallery’s massive Ilya Repin exhibit

Client: Tretyakov Gallery

“Unexpected” was a promo video for the Tretyakov Gallery’s massive Ilya Repin exhibit 

( https://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/exhibitions/ilya-repin/ ).

Our work beat out the field at Big Picture Festival in the Best Advertising Video category. It was also featured in the Red Apple festival and was featured on advertising screens in Moscow Metro cars. The promo resulted in an unprecedented onslaught of visitors: tickets to the exhibit sold out a month and a half in advance.

The idea behind “Unexpected” was time flowing in two directions. A kind of existential debate: time simultaneously slows down and slips away, into the past as well as the future.

Using reverse time filming, we crystallized a moment, making it meaningful and engaging audiences from the very first seconds.By choosing the most subtle color tones to replicate pastels on screen, we were able to recreate a legendary painting in video, thereby offering audiences a chance at internal catharsis by letting them experience that exciting, mysterious and gently intimate moment depicted by the artist.