Make-A-Wish lets kids call the shots

The Canada branch of the non-profit Make-A-Wish Foundation, which helps fulfil the dreams of seriously ill youngsters between 2.5 and 18 years of age, launches a touching campaign centred around children’s authorship.

Eschewing the artifice of plaintive piano music and carefully framed sentimental scenes, this raw, funny, tragic and inspiring film, Wishes Are Medicine, directed by Jordan Findlay through Boldly, and created by agency Zulu Alpha Kilo captures the reality – and incredible bravery – of kids living with health conditions that are progressive, degenerative, or malignant.

Using a custom two-iPhone rig, and a separate observational film shot on 35mm, the team used trust, flexibility and careful filmmaking to allow the individual kid’s personalities to lead the work.

The director explained how he connected immediately with the brief from the agency: “They wanted it to feel emotionally honest through a self-filmed aesthetic, culminating in each child revealing a prescription for a wish…sort of imagining a world where wishes could be prescribed in the same way as medication.

“It brought together the kind of filmmaking I am most drawn to: working with real people and real stories, then finding a visual or narrative framework that helps an audience enter their worlds differently. I knew I needed to earn the children’s trust before asking them to open up on camera. Working with the team, I was able to develop a process to ease them in gradually and at a pace that made each child comfortable. We pushed to have a pre-production window of multiple months, instead of the weeks usually allotted to campaigns like this.”