Selamat Lari Raya

Agency

Fastman Studios

Client

Julie's Manufacturing Sdn Bhd

Product/Service

Julie's Love Letters

Brief

Julie’s brief was simple: Tell a thought-provoking Raya story, while still keeping the humour and lightness Julie’s is known for.

But this year, we decided to push it a step further—we wanted to take viewers on an emotional rollercoaster. And so we did.

How? By starting with a Raya tradition often seen as a gesture of humility to others: the ‘salam’ (an act of seeking forgiveness).

Solution

In this season of Hari Raya that celebrates forgiveness, we tell a story about the hardest kind to give: your own.

Our film follows Johan, who is serving time in prison. The guilt he carries over his grandmother’s death outweighs his sentence, and when his grandfather Hassan tries to reconnect, Johan shuts Hassan out. Desperate, Hassan breaks the law to be imprisoned alongside Johan.

The film builds to a pivotal moment. In a flashback, Johan is a child learning to ‘salam’ to seek forgiveness from his grandparents during Raya. In the present, he comes face-to-face with his own reflection while washing his hands, and ‘salams’ himself—a memory of the past, and an act of self-forgiveness.

To bring the themes of guilt, grief and self-forgiveness to life, while still keeping the humour and lightness Julie’s is known for, getting the balance just right was essential. Every line had to land. Every scene had to breathe (while keeping the spot within a reasonable length, i