A Little Girl's Homemade Aquarium Comes Under Threat in Greenpeace Film

Film Launches Campaign Against Destructive Fishing

Published On
Mar 08, 2016

Editor's Pick

Greenpeace has launched an online film featuring a little girl who builds an amazing aquarium in her bedroom as part of its campaign to get people petitioning to stop destructive fishing in the Arctic.

The ad sees her tearing up her Elsa dress from "Frozen" as part of the project, and putting on a homemade diving suit before watching projections of underwater fish in her room. It's all magical, but the ending, in which a giant trawler net suddenly comes and destroys the fragile world she's created, communicates Greenpeace's sobering message: the Arctic is under threat. (The little girl, played by Emily Dante, gives a great performance with a suitably angry expression as a result.)

The film was made by Don't Panic London (the agency whose "Everything is Not Awesome" video for Greenpeace led to Lego severing its ties to Shell over the latter's Arctic drilling) and directed by Charlie Miller and Simon Mitchell. The agency's art direction team crafted the underwater set by hand to make it really look as if the child had created it, making every prop from items a child could find around the home, including tin foil cake wrappers, bottle tops and paper plates.

This ad is at the forefront of Greenpeace's campaign calling on fishing companies to stop destructive fishing in the northern Barents Sea and the waters around Svalbard, and for retailers and suppliers of well known brands like Birdseye, Findus and Iglo as well as fish restaurants across Europe, not to use suppliers that engage in destructive fishing that damage the habitat.