The artisanal virtuosity with which, through analog resources, the aesthetics and dynamics of video games have been recreated has earned “Your way out”, a spot on the American cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, the Grand Prix in the Film Craft competition at Cannes Lions 2026. The piece has been produced by MJZ Los Angeles and created by the New York agency Isle of Any.

Film Craft is the Cannes Lions competition that rewards exceptional filmmaking and production and post-production work that elevates the status of an idea and improves its execution in an outstanding way. This year, Film Craft’s record is made up of 43 awards, distributed as follows: a Grand Prix, 6 Gold Lions, 15 Silver and 21 Bronze.

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By country, the list of winners is led, as in the previous two years, by the United States, with a total of 21 lions. Spain follows, with eight trophies, which have been distributed in this way: a Golden Lion, three Silver and a Bronze for “No project without drama”, produced by Canada; two Silver Lions for “Beat cancer off”, by VML New York in collaboration with VML Madrid, for Fuck Cancer; and a Bronze Lion for “The Treasure Hunt”, from the Ogilvy agency with production by Rebolución for the Ministry of Equality.

This year, the organization has created several subcategories under the heading “AI Craft” to reward pieces in which “Human creativity will be combined with artificial intelligence to achieve results that neither could achieve alone”. The only entry made in this subcategory that has won a Lion is “L’ultimo uomo reale”, produced by Lipstick Berlin for Team One, which has won a Bronze Lion.

The Grand Prix of Film Craft at Cannes Lions 2026

The adventures of an NPC – a secondary character in a video game not controlled by the player, but by the software – who breaks free from his programmed code and finds his own path to the real world, is the story told by “Your way out”, the advertisement with which the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase has won the highest award in the Film Craft competition at Cannes Lions.

The ad was directed by Oscar Hudson and produced by MJZ Los Angeles with creativity from the Isle of Any agency. Cinematographic work is a display of craftsmanship because it has dispensed with visual effects, whether images generated by computer or artificial intelligence.

Thus, the video game world through which the NPC wanders in the first part of the spot – at the end of it, as a symbol of his liberation, he becomes a real character that moves in the physical world – has been built with real actors and physical sets created with 2D printing. The actors wore printed masks and prosthetics that pixelated their faces and gave them the rigid, angular features typical of video game characters. The sets were designed to appear low-resolution and deliberately monotonous, with aesthetic and narrative devices – the camera angle, for example – that evoke great classic titles such as “Grand Theft Auto” or “The Sims.”

The ad, which premiered during the Oscar broadcast on March 15, has as its soundtrack the song “It’s gotta be me,” performed by Sammy Davis Jr.
The spot receives its Grand Prix for its entry in the Direction subcategory, but has also won a Gold Lion in Production Design and Art Direction and one Silver and one Bronze in the same Film Craft category.

All Film Craft Golds at Cannes Lions 2025

Aside from Coinbase’s “Your way out,” five other campaigns have won Gold Lions in the Film Craft competition. They are these:

• “Shape of dreams”, produced by MJZ Los Angeles (United States) for On with the advertiser’s own creativity

Another work by the prestigious MJZ Los Ángeles at the top of the list of winners in this section. This time it is the elegant and refined piece directed by Spìke Jonze in which the Swiss sportswear brand On presents the collection co-created with the actress Zendaya, who is also the protagonist of the advertisement. This, as the brand explained at the time, is set in a design universe imagined by the actress that materializes on a blank canvas to exercise the imagination. In it, Zendaya thinks, plays and creates, the characters dance, the silhouettes evolve, the materials change and the ideas are perfected.

A highly aesthetic environment with its drops of humor that explores surrealism and avant-garde with garments that stretch, shrink and transform in both shape and color until reaching their final design. The audiovisual language combines music, editing and choreography, evoking the cultural codes of silent cinema and constructing a classic narrative revised through a prism of modernity. The advertisement has won Gold for its entry in the Direction subcategory.

• “I am not remarkable”, produced by Somesuch London (United Kingdom) for Apple with the advertiser’s own creativity

The virtuosity and ambition of Apple’s advertising productions return to the most prominent part of Film Craft’s record with this work carried out together with Somesuch. It is an almost three-minute spot that takes the form of a musical set at the university and that serves the brand to present its accessibility resources through the adventures of several students with different disabilities and whom the story follows – with a fast-paced rhythm marked by the musical theme created expressly for the advertisement -, from the moment of their admission until their full integration into university life, both in terms of classes and entertainment.

The work, which received Gold for its entry in the Casting subcategory, was directed by Australian director Kim Gehrig and also stands out for its handling of the camera and its choreography and character movements. Gehrig already directed “The Greatest” for Apple, a spot that won the Emmy for best ad in 2022.
This gold in Film Craft follows the one that Apple won last year in this same category with its spot “Find your friends”, also produced by Somesuch.

• “No project without drama”, produced by Canada (Spain), Supreme Music (Germany) and Tempomedia (Germany) for Hornbach with creativity by Heimat TBWA (Germany)

A cinematic tribute to the beauty and chaos of do-it-yourself realities. This is how Canada defines this spectacular work for the German home accessories chain Hornbach, in which the vicissitudes of a woman who wants to renovate her bathroom are narrated through spectacular images in which the initial chaos and the beauty of the final result are punctuated with an expressionist aesthetic, a music full of tremendousness and images that combine grandiose and everyday settings; Drops of humor are added to them, like those created by the humanized drops of water that overflow from the old pipe or go down the drain.

The production, directed by Lope Serrano, required the construction from scratch of the entire scenario for the complex action, which was filmed in its entirety, without resorting to image generation.
This work by Hornbach won its Gold in the Production Achievement subcategory. The German brand had already had great success in this section of Cannes Lions in 2024, when it won the Grand Prix for the spot titled “The square meter.”

• “Bullet machine”, produced by Habitant Productions (Mexico) for The Union and Article 19 with creativity from Gray México

The sound of the keys when a hand presses them is in time with the sound of shots fired at a house in this spot for the newspaper The Union and the organization that defends freedom of expression Article 19. The ad shows, in a dramatic documentary style, how a family sleeps while a journalist, Ernesto, prepares to write on his keyboard. As soon as he begins to do so, the shooting begins and the images show the anguish of his wife and daughters trying to protect themselves from the projectiles. The woman anxiously asks her husband to stop doing it, that enough is enough, but his hands return to the keyboard. The result of their action is the same: bullets passing through the walls.
The advertisement was directed by Andrea Pelegrín and Francisco Paparella and was awarded a Golden Lion for Sound Design, a task carried out by the company BDS.

• “Helicopter”, produced by Grin Machine and Somesuch Los Angeles (United States) for AWGE with creativity by Somesuch and the advertiser himself

Once again the aesthetics of old video games are the noblest part of Film Craft’s record. In this case it has been the inspiration for the spectacular video clip for the song “Helicopter”, by rapper A$AP Rocky, who has participated in the creativity through AWGE, his own audiovisual and musical production company. The video shows a dystopian scenario of rooftop riots, police car collisions and robot wars, while Rocky flies above the panorama hanging from a helicopter.

Those responsible for the production have reported that 52 cameras were used in the filming and emphasize that artificial intelligence was not used in the piece. Likewise, they point out that different visual techniques have been combined, including 4D volumetric scans or “Gaussian splats”, a computer graphics creation technique that allows generating photorealistic 3D models from a set of images.

More info.: Film Craft winners at Cannes Lions 2026