The Blog
We were commissioned by Human Rights Watch to work on an online animated awareness campaign called #TogetherToEndMaleGuardianship. The campaign was part of HRW’s report Boxed In: Women and Saudi Arabia’s Male Guardianship System and was aiming to shed a light on the discriminatory practices women have to live with on a daily basis. We chose three scenarios from the numerous interviews conducted by the research and created 3 short animated clips.
The campaign was launched by HRW on Sunday, 17 July, and has been seen by over 2 million people in less than three days!
The Independent (UK) first wrote about the project with the title “The cartoon that shows how ridiculous Saudi laws are for women” and opening paragraph “Thousands of people have circulated a short animation video designed to show the restrictions that Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system places on women”. The news spread quickly followed by an article in the New York Times focused exclusively on the three shorts and describing them scene-by-scene. EURONEWS created their own compilation of the 3 clips and the report findings. Following dozens of other articles, thousands of shares and posts across FB, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo and more we can confidently say that #TogetherToEndMaleGuardianship has gone viral! If you missed it, you can watch all three clips here.
BIG thanks goes out to the entire team (with everyone working at minimum 50% deferred rates): director/producer Maria Stanisheva; art director/illustrator Rositsa Raleva; animators Andrew Embury, Jardeson Rocha and Robert Anderson; music composer and sound designer Tim Bright!
And finally, thanks to HRW commissioning producer Janna Kyllästinen and HRW executive commissioning producer Pierre Bairin for trusting us with this job and being a true pleasure to work with. Hope the campaign serves its purpose and moves Saudi laws one step closer to gender equality!
