"The Fatal Question"

21 August 2025

3 mins

A difficult engagement.

It's relatively easy to create a film about an issue like knife crime that will resonate with advertising award juries, but it's an altogether more difficult task to create something that will resonate with the audience that matters - those who might be inclined to participate in this ever-growing problem.

This film may achieve exactly that. By focusing on a single fallacy about knife crime, it manages to alter the perception of it, at least as far as the participants of the film are concerned. Their amazement at learning that any stab would can be fatal feels authentic because it is mirrored by the viewer. The idea of there being a safe place to stab is an oxymoron, but most of would consider that there are probably places on the human body where it could be guaranteed that a would would not be fatal. And we'd be wrong.

The emotional escalation of the testimony through the film is beautifully paced by director Glue Scoiety (aka Jonathan Kneebone) and this too helps land the message.

This film isn't going to end knife crime but it might give pause to some of those inclined to carry a knife in the belief that they can defend themselves without posing a risk. They can't, and if they've seen this, they now know it.

UK

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