When a jersey goes on, something sacred happens. In Scholars Film's evocative campaign for the Concacaf Champions Cup, created with London agency Wildpigs, this transformation becomes the lens through which football's deeper truth emerges.
"Ever wonder why the crest covers your heart?" begins the campaign. "It's where the fight lives."
"I don't think this showcased anything unique," reflects director Colwyn Thomas. "If anything, I think it was a distillation of what we do best, on a bigger stage, with higher stakes. Years of experience brought out the best of the little moments in this piece."
Those moments emerged through vigilance. During a location scout in Mexico City, the team discovered a fan whose dog wore team colours and barked aggressively at strangers. "Suddenly we had a shot we'd never dreamt up," Thomas recalls.
This alertness to magic led them six hours into the mountains to capture a young girl who, after taking a brutal tackle, rises without hesitation to rejoin the game. "We traveled for about six hours and filmed for another three and all we got out of that day was that one long shot of her. It made it all worth it."
The production thrived on simplicity: a four-person crew, no lights, no rigs. In tight spaces, a director and photographer worked in wordless sync - just two storytellers reading each other's movements, capturing both motion and stillness simultaneously, the flow of action and the decisive moment frozen in time.
"It's the dance between structure and the unplanned magic," Thomas explains, a balance between meticulous planning and embracing unexpected moments that revealed football's quasi-religious nature without manufacturing it.
The result is a campaign that makes viewers feel something visceral. "Its primary task is to exact an emotional burst from the viewer," says Thomas, "and that seems to have been the case."
Scholars Film had the courage to explore a side of football rarely celebrated: the beauty of the battle. By showing the transformation that happens when someone puts on a jersey, they've created a testament to what lives beneath every crest - not just a game, but a fight passed down through generations, a legacy written in dirt and sweat, smoke and prayer.
That's not just good filmmaking. That's truth.
Watch film here: https://www.scholarsfilm.co.za/project/epic-battles
