Fixing a Boiler Becomes a Nail-Biting Cowboy Saga in This German Ad

Das Handwerk, the German Federation of Craftsmen, turns the act of fixing a broken boiler into a modern-day Western, in a commercial by Heimat Berlin.

The two-minute film is set in a snowy modern version of a Western town, where an old lady comes screaming out of her house in terror. She flags down a plumber in his truck, who bursts down the door of the house cowboy-style to find a priest appearing to be performing some kind of exorcism. To tense banjo music, he descends to the peril in basement and wrestles with the roaring iron stove, eventually transforming it into a modern-looking boiler. Then, he drives off into the sunset, watched by the grateful old lady and her admiring daughter, as the caption on screen asks: "So. What did you do today?"

Tore Frandsen directed the film via Sweet Shop and Bigfish Berlin. Frandsen says in a statement: "I've loved westerns since I was a kid, but I've never made one myself, so this project was instantly exciting for me. I did a lot of research into the genre and very early on found that there is something quite boring about the classic dusty-road-horse-and-tumbleweed-world. It's been seen so many times before, so the of risk of falling into a cliche was high. We decided to make a modern rendition and take it more into take it into a more contemporary world."