Director Sam Stuchbury Wins Cannes Prize

Aucklander Sam Stuchbury has won a Silver Screen Young Director Award at Cannes for his work in raising awareness about the effects pornography has on children, directing the government-funded viral porn commercial “Keep It Real Online”.

The award is recognised as the most important “must-see” fringe event of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The commercial tackles the sensitive and often-avoided topic of young children’s increasingly easy access to pornography, and how this can skew their perceptions of sex.

“Winning a Young Director Award is a real honour,” Stuchbury says in a press release.

“With Keep It Real Online, we wanted to use kiwi humour to tackle a subject that can often make for awkward family conversations. We couldn’t have asked for a better client to let us really push the boat out creatively and do something that we knew might get some attention,” he says.

Stuchbury, the founder of creative advertising agency Motion Sickness, made the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 Creative Disruptor list.

Original article by Scoop, July 31, 2020.