a vision for every story
about
Stories help make sense of the world—they brought order to chaos and helped us learn, communicate, and evolve. From hieroglyphs to modern motion graphics, visual storytelling is a powerful art that speaks directly to human emotions. Through images, children learn to speak, artists inspire change, and brands convey their ideas. We believe in the power of stories to communicate in a more impactful and effective way.
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What
We tell stories. We specialise in creating and producing films that help brands communicate with their audience. Our focus is on visual storytelling to find impactful ways to deliver messages. Whether it’s for television or TikTok, an advert or a documentary, we do it. What drives us are great ideas, regardless of their format. We believe in humour and originality as effective tools for creating more memorable work.
Miguel Coimbra
Miguel is a film director and producer at el-Hey. He studied design and entered the advertising world in 1995. At Z. Advertising, he won major accolades as an art director, including Portugal’s first-ever Cannes Gold Lion (1997) and an RTC Grand Prix for a Mercedes-Benz film. He later worked at JWT, TBWA, and BBDO, earning further recognition at Eurobest, the Clio Awards, Art Directors Club NY, One Show, and a second Cannes Lion. In 2004, Miguel shifted to directing at Ministério and, in 2010, joined Takeiteasy. He directed numerous commercial films, including the award-winning documentary Blood Brothers, selected for prestigious festivals like Clermont-Ferrand. Miguel founded el-Hey, blending his background in advertising and creativity with his expertise in directing and producing visually compelling films and content.
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Rita Barbosa
Rita Barbosa film director, video and visual artist and occasionally set designer, has a degree in Digital Arts, Sound and Image, at the School of Arts of UCP (2002) and other professional training including Direction of Photography at Maine Media Workshops. As a commercial director she worked with major brands, such as Vodafone, Lidl, Continente, Luso, Heineken, Compal, Matinal, Médis, Terra Nostra, Planta, Azeite Gallo (Unilever).
Her first short film “Friends after dark”, produced by O Som e a Fúria, premiered at the 69th Locarno Festival. Her most recent film-performance “Amigos Imaginários” (2019) was shown at Teatro Rivoli, one of the most prestigious cultural venues in Portugal and at the Festival Temps D’Images in Lisbon. She also regularly collaborates in several performance, animation, music and theatre projects like Tiago Rodrigues’s play “Three fingers below the knee”, winner of the European Theatre Award – Theatrical Realities. As a video artist, her experimental videos “Get Bent” (part of the influential PMLJ collection) and “Pop Fish” were shown at exhibitions and festivals such as the Cartier Foundation, Impakt and Courtisane.
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Work
Miguel Coimbra
Brand Content
and Experimental
Smeye for Wink (eyebrows)
(!) Craft _Silver Award_Best edit_CCP21
Smeye is a good example of creative content we can make for brands with another type of budgets and needs, nothing to do with classic advertising. The film was made for social media and stores.
Written and directed by Marco Espírito Santo
Longbo X Fred Perry it's a brand content created and directed by Miguel Coimbra and Marco Espírito Santo.
Music and sound design by Mikkel Solnado, from Great Dane.