Eva
Based on a true story.
In memory of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Starts May 1st @ 4pm Israel time
We don’t normally start our articles like this. We usually try to give our readers a bit of context first. This time, you know all the facts. You know who, you know what, and you know when. As you can tell, these simple facts are still more powerful than a long-form introduction to a horrifying story.
Just like the short description, the premise is simple. What would it be like if a young girl had Instagram during the Holocaust? Would it be simpler to recount the story of the terrible times to today’s youth? By using a way that will make them sit up and listen? Would Instagram be the right medium? Leo Burnett Israel and hi-tech entrepreneur Matti Kohavi definitely think so!
That’s why they welcome you to take a deep dive into Eva’s Stories – a first-person account of Nazi persecution.
The main star of the imaginary Instagram show is Eva Heiman, a 13-year-old girl from Hungary who sadly perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp altogether with 1.1 million men, women, and children. During these horrific times, Eva managed to leave a diary describing the last months of her life. Now, almost 75 years later, and in preparation of the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day, her diary has been adapted into more than 50 Instagram stories. These modern-day recollections of everyday activities will depict her life and will be published every 30 minutes over a period of 24 hours on Eva Heiman’s official Instagram page set up especially for this purpose – @eva.stories.
Starting May 1 2019, her life will then be resurrected with the help of still images, text passages, and stories that will let the audience bear witness to events that took place during the last months of her life – from getting to know her family and friends, through to the Nazi invasion of her city, the uprooting from the house, move to the ghetto, violence and torture she survived, right up to her boarding the train to Auschwitz.
This way it will be much easier for everyone, and not just millennials, to imagine what would have happened if Jewish kids who lived during the Holocaust had had access to a smartphone, used social networks, and could have documented their daily endeavours! This way we will know what it was like when the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, while Eva Heiman was a just 13-year-old girl living in the town of Nagyvarad. Eva began writing a diary on her birthday, February 13th and stopped on May 30th – just three months later and three days before she was deported by train to Auschwitz, where she perished.
75 years later, her story has been adapted into a unique new Instagram series which is based on a special film project produced and created by hi-tech entrepreneur Mati Kochavi and his daughter Maya, who invested millions of dollars in the project. Together, they adapted Eva’s personal diary into a screenplay. Joined by a team of 400 production people, actors and extras, they all reconstructed Eva’s life and filmed it in Lviv, Ukraine.
“We took the diary and actually translated it into a full 70-minute film,” Mati Kochavi explains in the press release. “It is one of the biggest projects that Instagram has ever done. We asked ourselves what would happen if Eva, instead of a pen and paper for writing a diary, had a smartphone and Instagram. That’s when we decided to shoot the entire film with a smartphone or a camera that simulates the smartphone, with the girl always holding the camera, and the entire film being shot from her perspective,” he follows. Kochavi then adds that “the idea was to build the environment in which Eva lived and supposedly photographed what she was sending to her friends.” What an idea!
Working with Leo Burnett Israel to get the word out, the campaign has launched with billboards and a teaser trailer video “What if a girl during the Holocaust had Instagram?” and influencer activation strategy. Within hours it sparked a nationwide conversation and @eva.stories Instagram page became the first commercial Instagram page in Israel to organically gather over 120.000 followers in a week. While over 1,000 influencers and Israeli celebrities have already posted about Eva’s Stories, the Israel-based agency thinks that the real win so far was to see the number of youngsters who have signed up to the page rise so quickly, while they started for the first time discussing Holocaust Day ahead of its regular date.
The unusual experience kicks off just tomorrow and, don’t forget that the posts will appear every 30 minutes until 10:00 AM on May 2nd the time at which the siren will sound and people all over Israel will stand still for a one minute of silent remembrance. Time at which we will also air Eva’s last story – right before she was shipped off to Auschwitz, never to return.
When asked Maya Kochavi said: “The stories will turn Eva from a nameless face into a colorful, lifelike and relevant figure that tells about of her life and what’s happening in it in much the same way millions of people around the world today document their everyday lives”. Will you be watching?
Credits:
Project credits:
Screenplay: Maya Kochavi & Mati Kochavi
Direction: Mati Kochavi & Mayv Kochavi
Executive producers: Mati Kochavi & Yona Wiesental
Production company: Pov Productions, Color film
Producers: Neta Karni & Hadar Albaranes&Liat Lehavi
Dop: Lael UtnikLine
Producer & 1st AD: Shabtai Itzhak Eden
Editor: Arik Lahav Leibovich
Research: Dr. Liran Gordon
Client: K’s Galleries
Agency credits:
Agency: Leo Burnett Israel
CEO: Adam Polachek
VP Creative: Ami Alush
Chief Client Director: Idit Zukerman
Creative Team: Oren Ben Naim, Meital Miller
Account Supervisor: Orian Liber
Account Manager: Reut Frid
Studio Manager: Sagi Valenstain
Media: Publicis Media
Marcom: Eva Hasson