This Gin Brand's Crazy Origin Story Involves Steering a Giant Onion to Heaven

It’s hard to find the words to describe “Tears in Heaven,” a commercial brought to you by Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Germany for Tears Dry Gin. 

Better that you see it yourself.

“Tears in Heaven,” directed by Bernd Faass, is a student project. The client is obscure, though you can evidently order a bottle of the stuff from the website. 

Still, spec or not, “Tears in Heaven” stands out. Even the way it’s shot draws you in. Maybe it’s the intense oddness in the expressions of all players involved—the scientist whose gin sponges have gone dry; the man whose every sinew is dedicated to turning the mill; the farmer who, eyes full of foreboding, brings a giant sacrificial onion to its fate; the astronaut who completes the final step. 

The landscape is also memorable—a stark wonderland, apocalyptically gritty, the kind of place where people who share high stakes hold hands, conventions be damned. 

Thus, you’re gripped the whole way through, even upon discovering that the entire drama revolves around the success of a man who must steer a giant onion close enough to a disembodied pyramid-eye to make it cry, and then—precise as anything—bring a giant sponge closer still, to absorb the tear for gin making.

We’re reminded of dreams we’ve had and lost. Nothing makes sense, yet it somehow forms its own logic. (Case in point: We wondered aloud, “Where did that one-eyed pyramid come from? Is it just there, floating in space, all the time?” To which a colleague irritably replied, “It’s in heaven. They’re making heaven cry.”)

The website, Drink Tears, builds on this world by being still more inscrutable: “We shoot giant onions into space to steal god’s tears. From each flight we bring enough precious liquid to fill exactly 1,000 units of heavenly dry gin. Each one uniquely labeled and bottled by hand. These tears are bright and fresh. A holy blaze that guides you through the night.”

If you weren’t a gin person, maybe you became one then and there. What single malt holds a candle to the provoked weeping of a god? We won’t even add tonic—and all the better, considering “because we drown our drinks in tonic, god cried and gave us tears. He gave his tears for everyone who believes in gin shall not perish, but have eternal sunshine.”

CREDITS
Production Company: Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg
Co-Production Companies: Element E Filmproduktion, Rocket Film
Writer / Director: Bernd Faass
Idea: Jędrzej Golecki
Producers: Alexander Pietzsch, Finn Neubert
Head of Visual Effects: Matthias Bäuerle
Director of Photography: Markus Gebhart
Production Designer: Nadja Götze
Editor: Henning Nolte-Tschofen
Casting: Tobias Krautstrunk, DeeBeePhunky Casting
Colour Grading: Armin Riedel, Moritz Ripprich, Walking on the Moon
Composer: Sizzer
Sound Design: Denis Elmagic