Academy Award winning director Ben Proudfoot (“The Queen of Basketball”) and digital business transformation company Publicis Sapient have partnered to launch Impact Films, a short film series designed to showcase technology “as a force for good.”

The three-part film series uses the medium of short documentary to technological advancements through the lens of a person whose life was impacted using the Oscar-winning expertise of Proudfoot and his company Breakwater Studios.

Take the social good initiative’s debut project, “Never Done,” as an example — the 16-and-a-half-minute film tells the story of Kersten, a single mom from Charlotte, North Carolina, who was forced to quit her job amid the COVID-19 pandemic because of a lung disease diagnosis and found herself and her two young daughters just days away from eviction. It was Publicis Sapient’s client DreamKey Partners that ultimately saved the day via a new digital platform that delivered critical government-mandated financial assistance to Kersten and tens of thousands of families like hers in the nick of time.

In a Zoom call with Variety, Publicis Sapient’s CMO Teresa Barreira and Proudfoot traced the origins of the documentary. The idea began with Barreira, who in July 2021 was looking for a different way to frame the company and its clients’ impact on the world.

“It was really about bringing humanity to technology and meaning to the work. As a company it has always been important that what we do transcends the organization; our purpose is to help people, so I wanted to bring that to life,” Barreira explains. “Ben is a master of telling those stories from the eyes of one person.”

In the case of DreamKey Partners, Publicis Sapient had done a traditional marketing case study, which revealed that 40,000 people had benefited from the new digital platform. “It’s an impressive number, but it’s a number; it’s not a story,” Barreira adds.

So, she approached Alex Kahn, Publicis Sapient’s Global Head of Content, who then reached out to Proudfoot. By Oct. 2021, the company had developed a proposal to create the series of films that would highlight these stories and within a week, and after meeting with Barreira, Kahn and Publicis Sapient CEO Nigel Vaz, Proudfoot and his team were on board. What sold him on the opportunity was Publicis Sapient’s willingness to allow the documentarian full editorial autonomy as his team investigated the truth of the technology’s impact and searched for the perspective through which to share it.

“I was very clear that I’m a documentary filmmaker, I’m not an advertising person, and I’ll tell you if I find that this didn’t help people,” Proudfoot says, noting that he wasn’t interested in making traditional branded content. “The pitch for me was, ‘COVID hit. Congress hits their gavel to approve $50 billion to be distributed to people who need help with rent or mortgage.’ And then the question becomes, ‘How does the money actually get from there to the people who need it desperately? What is that process like?’”

From there, the mission was to find someone for whom the “efficiency factor” formed by the new technology made the difference.

“When I got on the phone with Kersten, she said, ‘The difference was one day.’” Proudfoot recalls. “The moment that she got the assistance was the day prior to her eviction, so if the system had been any less efficient, her family would have been homeless. So, I said, ‘Okay, this is a great story.’”

“Never Done” was filmed over four days at the end of January 2022, with Proudfoot and his team also weaving in the story of Kate, the county administrator who helped deliver Kersten the funds; the two women’s stories run parallel thanks to their shared experience of losing their beloved fathers to cancer.

“There was just a rich story to be told about us carrying on the work of our parents, about technology being used to combat cynicism and inefficiency in a way that makes me feel hopeful for the future,” Proudfoot notes. “It was a great experience and I’m proud to have given a platform and spotlight, in partnership with Publicis Sapient, to Kersten, who I think is a great American role model of resilience and strength.”

When Proudfoot won the Oscar for his short documentary “The Queen of Basketball” in March 2022, “Never Done” was in post-production, with the film being completed in early May. The film’s title is a reference to the adage — which Kersten repeats in the film — “A mother’s work is never done,” and the same could be said of Proudfoot, Barreira and their partnership. While the current plan is for three films, both parties see the sky as the limit for this endeavor.

“Our whole business was built around looking for partners like Teresa,” Proudfoot says. “We identified many years ago that there was something beautiful happening where brands that were interested in being a part of the attention economy — whose traditional tool of the 60 and 30-second television commercial was hugely diminishing in its efficacy — and filmmakers that could make compelling, entertaining films that were distributed on the internet, there was a beautiful partnership made in heaven there. And it was just a matter of time before we found each other.”

Impact Films makes it public debut on Oct. 7 with the premiere of “Never Done” at the New Yorker Festival. The second film — which shines a spotlight on an attorney in the Los Angeles Public Defender’s Office – heads into production later this month. The third title is still in early development.

Barreira shares that demand has been so high that the festival moved the screening to a larger theater, a great indicator of the interest in the cutting-edge content. She also teases that Publicis Sapient is in conversation with major streaming platforms about exclusive distribution rights to the series.

“Marketing has always been about storytelling, we just tell stories about a brand,” Barreira explains. “But if you look at the great campaigns, the story has always been about the ‘Why?’ not the ‘What’ and the ‘How.’ And in some ways, with Impact Films, we are actually elevating to even more of the why.”

She adds: “The film is pure. We’re not going to talk about the specifics of the work; we talk about the purpose of the technology and how it can be a tremendous force for good. The point is to show that great solutions and great technology has to be built with people in mind.”

For more on Impact Films and “Never Done,” go to publicissapient.com/impact.

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