KASTEELBIER / Jef Boes, Photographer

The campaign shares stories of a day in the life of six residents of six different countries. Cinematographic footage captures the countries’ cultural wealth, while also highlighting how Belgian beer culture has slowly gained a spot there. Each film ends with a familiar moment of (self)reflection at the end of the day. During this moment, we see the protagonist deliberately opt for a Belgian Kasteelbier over their own country’s traditional beverage. This moment of true wealth is also captured in a campaign portrait.

Around the world in 13 months

That this project was ambitious had long been established, but various COVID waves and travel restrictions, followed almost immediately by the war in Ukraine, caused the project to be seriously delayed. The campaign shoot, initially planned for one trip of just over a month, ended up taking over a year. Each of the six campaign productions consisted of an average of six days, including travel on and off, a final recce of the locations, at least two days of video shoot and a full day allocated to the photographic image of the campaign.

Stories revolve around emotions, and as everyone will acknowledge in these times of massive content consumption, emotions are not only invoked by beautiful images. Music is also a major component of such experiences. A good composition draws you deeper into the story, provides context and elicits goosebumps. So we  contacted Peter Baert, head his own renowned sound studio Raygun in Brussels, to create these elements. The film composer, who received international accolades for Hollywood production “The Water Man” in 2021, was immediately enthusiastic on being introduced to the project. He succeeded in creating a soundtrack that perfectly encompassed the spirit of the country in question on a not-so-lavish budget. For virtually all countries, and accordingly, for every film, he had local artists from those countries come to the studio to make sure of the details, or “couchkes”, as they say in Brussels. These soundtracks will be released on Spotify in the near future. 

From its inception thirty years ago, Kasteelbier has strived to make wealth tangible for all. By democratically marketing their beer – rich in taste and content – and making it available worldwide. But also by giving everyone a moment to reflect on the beauty and essence of their own lives, and find happiness in them. This mission was launched thirty years ago in Belgium and today it extends to the farthest corners of Europe and the world.
And that is exactly what we portrayed.

We set out to capture world citizens and their true wealth.

We travelled to Wyoming, France, Israel, Russia and Ireland to capture short portraits of bon vivants, candid and not bothered by what the outside world thinks of them. All with a Kasteelbier in hand. Of course.

and .. Russia.

Sidenote: One of the stories in the campaign series is that of Ivan and was shot in St. Petersburg (Russia) a few months before Putin’s sudden invasion of the Ukraine. The campaign film will not be silenced out of respect for the local population, who in large numbers expressed their disapproval about the necessity of this war, but will also not be shown in the campaign media out of respect for the Ukrainian people.