Clowns
Office
Spain
Services
Creativity
Art direction
Audiovisual production
Conceptual campaign
Date
2025
In fantastic cinema, fear rarely walks alone. For decades, horror has found in comedy an unexpected ally—a way to heighten tension, subvert expectations, and sometimes release the unease it provokes.
The 58th edition of the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival aimed to position itself precisely there. Its leitmotif focuses on comedy within horror and science fiction, celebrating the pleasure of laughing at fear and highlighting humor’s role as a catalyst for what unsettles us.
How can this crossover of genres be turned into a piece capable of representing the spirit of the festival without explicitly explaining it?
Solution
To bring this idea to life, we started with a figure that embodies this duality like few others: the clown. Its ambiguity—capable of provoking laughter or discomfort with the same gesture—makes it the ideal protagonist to explore the boundary between the playful and the unsettling.
The spot follows two clowns who share an apartment. Their daily routine is familiar: waking up, having breakfast, getting ready for the day, arguing, and living with small quirks. But this normalcy is interrupted by images that disturb the balance. Scenes such as sharing a bowl of cereal while watching a meat grinder in action introduce the contrast that defines the piece. The trivial becomes strange, the domestic crosses into the macabre.
The concept does not seek to emphasize the mix—it lets it coexist. Horror and humor appear in the same space, without hierarchy or explanation, building a universe where both genres rely on each other to function.
Clowns does not explain the festival’s leitmotif. It stages it. A piece that condenses comedy within horror through intuition, contrast, and playfulness, connecting directly with the identity of an edition that celebrates the power of fantastic cinema to reinvent itself, surprise, and laugh at its own fears.
Case developed by CHINA, part of LLYC.
