“A woman searches for her absent father in the faces of strangers—men with a mustache. Driven by a rousing soundtrack, she sings about her father’s mercurial nature and her encounters with him in an estranging journey.”
Dutch multidisciplinary artist Sonja van Hamel has just won the Jury Award for Best Music Video 2025 at the Netherlands Film Festival for her self-directed film.
Goodbye To Mercury is based on Sonja van Hamel’s recollections of her unknown father. She grew up in the 1970s with a single mother; lacking a photo of her father, her mother clipped an image from a magazine of a man with a mustache and presented this to her daughter as her “possible father.” As a girl, she projected this image onto passengers, turning them all into potential fathers. In this music-driven film, van Hamel weaves AI-generated images based on the original cutout image into a cinematic experience that resembles the alienating reality she experienced as a child.
The NFF jury praised its deeply personal and emotionally resonant visual language — a world that lingers long after viewing and moves in harmony with her music. Remarkably, the jury highlighted her use of AI as a valuable creative tool, rather than a threat to artistry.
Van Hamel, known for blending music, design, and film, continues to experiment with the boundaries of visual storytelling.
More info: sonjavanhamel.nl
Goodbye To Mercury by Sonja van Hamel
