A woman married to the Berlin Wall, a pony going for a ride on the S-Bahn, a nudist chasing a wild boar. There’s no doubt that Berlin is home to the weirdest stories. With this in mind, for our first campaign for Festival of Animation Berlin, we had the insight: “In Berlin, only animation beats reality”. We expressed this concept in various directions, starting with a series of animations based on true Berlin stories that debuted on the Berliner Fenster and online media. To find more true, yet weird Berlin stories, we went to the one place that has surely witnessed lots of them: the Späti – a sort of typical Berliner convenience store, originally from East Berlin.

We teamed up with three extremely “hood” Spätis and brought to life their craziest true stories in a series of mini-docs. Their owners became FAB ambassadors, inspiring stickers using classic Späti phrases and were also invited to be exclusive jury members of the Späti Award – for the best Berliner animation according to them, naturally. We also collaborated with Fritz-Kola to develop a special edition bottle available only at our collaborating Spätis and the festival.

Along with the Späti stories, we developed a poster campaign in which we invited illustrators to share their own vision of “In Berlin, only animation beats realitY”. These posters resulted in a series of vibrant, colourful prints spread across Berlin’s most creative areas and train stations.