About Goodbye To Mercury

A short film on the first single of the forthcoming album 'Inner Solar System'

A woman searches for her absent father in the faces of strangers—men with a moustache. Driven by a rousing soundtrack, she sings about her father’s mercurial nature and her encounters with him in an estranging, cinematic journey. Film and music are strongly intertwined, because the filmmaker is also the songwriter, performer and protagonist.

Goodbye To Mercury is based on Sonja van Hamel’s recollections of her childhood. She grew up in the 1970s with a single mother; lacking a photo of her father, her mother clipped an image from a magazine of a man with a moustache and presented this to her daughter as her “possible father”. The girl projected this image on to passengers, turning them all into potential fathers. In this music-driven film, Van Hamel weaves AI-generated images based on the original cut-out picture into a cinematic experience.

Written and directed by Sonja van Hamel
Animated by Zoltan Korai
Music by Sonja van Hamel / performed by The Leonids
Produced by BirdFish

More info:

Sonja van Hamel

Goodbye To Mercury will be screened on 27 September at the Netherlands Film Festival during Fullscreen x XITE: The best music videos!

You can buy tickets here.

Watch Goodbye To Mercury

From 8 to 21 August, you can also vote for this short film for the audience award

Vote here!