Lataphone

It’s 2020, and we are waking up to a world that grows ever more divisive. Racial, political, identity and class wars are being fought in the streets and in the comment sections. All it takes is a different point of view, held fiercely enough, to incite a Twitter brawl. It seems that the spirit of the age is resentment, fear and hate. “We…are taught to hate by the world around us,” says political commentator Sally Kohn, in a TED Talk. It’s in this climate that a truth rings stronger than ever: the world needs love. Love in the form of small kindnesses, that attempts to understand; love that dares to stand up to a hostile world. This is the kind of love that’s at work in Alaska Milk’s latest film, “Lataphone.” Produced by MullenLowe Philippines, this beautifully directed spot tells the story of a lonely man, an insistent child and the improvised string-and-can phone that connects and changes them.