Welcome to Auteur, a newsletter that dives deep into the world of film and asks: What can we, as brand builders, learn from this? Published every other week, each edition takes a film of our guest’s choosing, and extracts the creative lessons.
Film is one the richest mediums we have for understanding how narrative, aesthetics, and language can be woven together to move an audience, and this is an ambition that lies at the heart of what we do as designers, marketers, and strategists.
Thank you for joining us. Auteur is written and curated by Thursday—a strategic design studio based in the architectural city of Winchester. We work globally with the ethos that being different isn’t enough—what truly matters is being interesting.
This week’s guest is Rui Da Paz.
“I studied ceramics in high school, got kicked out of Central Saint Martins, and co-founded an art gallery in Soho, before eventually finding design and sticking with it. For the last 5 years, I’ve been mostly focused on creative direction, brand building and management.
I’m from Lisbon, but have lived in Copenhagen, Stockholm, London, and Milan. Currently, I hide out in Friuli, in Italy.”
More about Rui here.
Introducing Where Is The Friend’s House? (1987)
Iranian director and screenwriter, Abbas Kiarostami, places us behind the wide eyes of Ahmad, an 8-year old boy embarking on a gruelling quest. Not to conquer a villain or save a country from collapse, but to return his friend’s notebook. Kiarostami injects Ahmad’s otherwise child-like mission with great maturity and nobility, one that the adults in the film repeatedly fail to comprehend, and one that invites viewers to see the world from a child’s eyes and remember how all-encompassing the smallest happenings could feel.
For Rui, this was a film that moved him emotionally, in part, because of its simplicity.
“To me, some of the most beautiful films are those centered around a very simple story or idea. There's real beauty in purity, and it's not easy to do—the natural tendency is to overcomplicate or overthink the narrative.
Where Is the Friend's House? perfectly embodies the hero’s journey. And perhaps because of the childhood nostalgia it evokes, it always becomes an immense emotional experience for me—poetic, existential, and subtle, like most of Kiarostami’s work.
Aesthetically, as we’d expect from K, it’s breathtakingly harmonious. I’m always struck by how his style of realism manages to feel so honest and so personal. The compositions, the photography, the use of colour, he makes the most of every tool at his disposal to tell the story.”
I was equally moved as the film settled in my psyche in the days after first watching it. Let’s get into it—as always, no real spoilers lay within.
The Big Idea: Resist and persist.
Every great film—like every great brand—is anchored by a defining concept or conversation it can own. Here, I explore a central idea from the film, and play with how it could translate into a brand context.
“Mother. Mother. Mother. I took Mohammad Reza’s notebook. I have to go and give it back.”
“What?”
“I took Mohammad Reza’s notebook. I have to go and give it back.”
Set in rural northern Iran, the film opens in a village classroom filled wall-to-wall with a small army of tiny doe-eyed boys, dressed in rainbow-coloured wool vests and crinkled shirts. We first hear them, and then see them, scrambling to their seats in preparation for a scolding from their teacher.
Nematzadeh receives the harshest reprimanding—he did not do his homework in a notebook, despite being told three times. And despite being told three times Nematzadeh loses his notebook again after class, setting Ahmad on a mission to return it, against all odds.
Ahmad then sets off, defying his mother’s sergeant-style commands—'Go rock the baby,' 'Take your shoes off,' 'Go and get me bread'—a tone that trickles on from the Teacher and is adopted by nearly every adult in the film. Instead, he runs breathlessly from village to village, determined to return the notebook.
He’s met with endless dismissal and distraction, but despite this, he resists and persists with a quiet resolve. Though his voice is often but a whisper, and he’s barely one-quarter of the height of everyone and everything else in the film, he takes himself seriously. He disobeys authority in service of what he believes to be right, with an incredibly endearing innocence.
Why it Works: The pleasure we feel in seeing someone succeed in spite of the odds is why the hero’s journey is such an enduring motif. If it were a brand, Where Is The Friend’s House? would offer an intriguing, quieter take on a challenger brand. Comms wouldn’t focus on ‘disruption’ or ‘dethroning the old guard’ but rather explore ‘devotion’ and ‘doing the right thing’.
What Where Is The Friend’s House? teaches us about brand.
Lesson 1: Surface the hero in your story—it (or they) might be hiding.
Ahmad’s quiet pursuit is constantly, and often comically, drowned out by the everyday rhythms of his rural community. Women wash clothes, men haggle over work, babies wail, cows moo, and roosters crow. The film never frames him as extraordinary—in fact, his smallness is what stands out. His world is big, noisy, and indifferent. But still, he runs.
We’ve all heard the phrase “It’s always the quiet ones.” And in this case, it’s true: Ahmad’s resilience and moral clarity speak volumes, even when he barely does.
Insight: Is there a hidden hero in your business that you could begin to surface in comms and campaigns? Alternatively, can you bring more subtlety to your design—resisting an accent colour or obvious motif?
Lesson 2: The world is preoccupied—choose one message, one fight.
The dialogue of the entire film hangs on a repeated refrain: “I need to return Nematzadeh’s notebook.” Ahmad’s insistence, and the subtle variations in how he phrases and delivers this message, become rhythmic—almost hypnotic. At first, he states his purpose plainly, asking directly if anyone knows Nematzadeh or where he lives. But when that fails, he adapts: asking instead if someone is his father, chasing after a man who he believes to be his father.
One of the film’s most iconic, repeated images is Ahmad running up and down a wide green hill, tracing a zig-zagging path. It mirrors the nature of his journey—circular, uncertain, always interrupted. And yet, with quiet determination, he keeps going. He has one job to do, and he refuses to let it go.
Insight: What’s the one thing your brand is here to do? Growth demands constant pivots, expansions, iterations, new features—clarity of purpose is radical. Try to find your "notebook"—the one thing you’re here to deliver, no matter how winding the path.
Lesson 3: Don’t forget to dress up, and take yourself seriously.
The contrast between Ahmad and the adults around him is visual as much as it is moral. The men he encounters are weary, slouched, and barefoot, dressed in dust-covered overalls or loose, tired clothes. Ahmad, in contrast, is neat. He’s buttoned up and well-kept, even as he runs himself ragged.
It’s a subtle but immensely powerful signal. He may be the youngest and quietest person in the film—but in that attire, we feel his conviction and end up sharing it ourselves. He’s dressed for the role he’s decided to play.
Insight: This is a simple reminder about the importance of great design—it signals that you care deeply about the value you offer, so much so, you’ve also invested in how it’s presented. Where is your design letting you down? What are you signalling with your visual ID?
Closing Thoughts
Restraint is compelling. When you strip away the noise and choose one message, one visual idea, one small act to do really well, people remember it, and root for you. In a noisy world, it’s the simplest messages—repeated with care, and dressed beautifully—that leave the deepest impression.
Thank you for reading, and I’d love to hear if and how this made you consider your brand-building efforts a little differently.
Until next time,
Shopé