On February 14, the football team Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) played against Caen at Parc Des Princes. For most players, this game was just another day on the job. For striker and team captain Zlatan Ibrahimović, this was his most important game to date. In the second minute of the game, Zlatan scored and took his shirt off, eliciting a warning and revealing that underneath his jersey, he had 50 new names tattooed on his torso. Names of 50 individuals he’d never met – and just a small portion of the 805 million people that are suffering from hunger today.
Zlatan may not be able to end world hunger alone, but he does know how to make the front page of newspapers worldwide. Together with The United Nations World Food Programme and leading agency Forsman & Bodenfors, Zlatan created this pro bono campaign centering on his tattoo artwork to turn the spotlight from himself onto the names of the people that need it most.
The film centerpiece was directed by Gustav Johansson and produced by Johansson’s Scandinavian film production company, New Land. Beginning in black and white, Johansson’s camera picks out the detail of names written on Zlatan’s flesh with a vivid eye, as the somber palette compliments the mood of the message. The evolution to color during Zlatan’s grand reveal on the soccer pitch dovetails perfectly with the tonal shift of sentiment, echoing hope and positivity for the future.