Journey is a feature film produced by Lapis in collaboration with Put It Out There Pictures on behalf of the Australian Government, as part of their wider anti-illegal migration campaign. Lapis aired and marketed the telemovie between February and July 2016, across four countries, over a period of six months.
The strategic objective behind the movie was to save lives and reduce illegal migration by deterring would-be migrants from attempting to reaching Australia illegally by boat. The movie was an empathetic portrayal of the various factors that drive maritime migration to Australia and the dangers that migrants face when they use this route.
The storyline and characters were drawn from the largest source countries of illegal migration to Australia. The telemovie was aired and promoted throughout those regions via a variety of broadcast and online media channels.
The movie leveraged the universal power of entertainment drama to convey facts and ideas across cultures and geographies. Quantitative audience data was obtained through phone surveys and web-based monitoring of social media metrics, including the Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and YouTube pages associated with the telemovie.