Apple’s holiday film has become an event of its own, and for 2026 the company has swapped the iPhone and AirPods for the Mac. “The Dreamer”, made with TBWA\Media Arts Lab and directed by Melina Matsoukas, is a wordless, almost four-minute short about a boy who loses his nerve as an artist and the parents who never stop seeing it in him. It went live on November 12 on Apple’s official YouTube channel, and the gift at the center of it is a MacBook Neo.
A whole childhood in four minutes
The film opens on a baby staring up at a mobile of bright paper shapes, then races through a childhood told in drawings. The boy paints with his hands, sketches on the train, doodles on an old iMac and lies in the grass pointing at the clouds. Then the world starts to push back. At school his art becomes something to hide, and the teenager we meet later has packed it away, drawing in secret and at one point lying fully clothed in an empty bathtub, a sketchbook clutched to his chest. On Christmas morning, in matching red plaid pyjamas, his parents hand him a box with a photo of his younger self taped to the wrapping. Inside is a MacBook Neo. That night, under a desk lamp, he starts storyboarding again, and a caped character in a beanie takes flight across the screen while his mother watches from the doorway. The endline: “Show someone you believe in them.”
Matsoukas, Young and Brantley make it look like cinema
The craft is the reason to watch. Matsoukas, best known for music videos and features, keeps the camera close and patient, and Bradford Young’s cinematography gives every room a lived-in, slightly underexposed warmth: teal school corridors, amber bedroom light, the soft haze of a winter morning. It looks like an independent film, not a laptop ad. The small details are carefully chosen too, from the palette pendant on the boy’s chain to the photo on the gift, which says more about the parents than any line of dialogue could.
The secret weapon is Hebru Brantley. The Chicago artist created every piece of art on screen, from the toddler scribbles to the final animated character, and the drawings grow up alongside the boy. When the hand-drawn hero finally moves on the MacBook, it feels earned, because we have watched the style mature for three minutes. Strawberry Guy’s “Give Me a Dream” does the rest. It is soft, a little fragile and almost a lullaby, and its lyric about wanting “something to be” fits the story so neatly that it never feels like a licensed needle drop.
Where the dream gets a little too tidy
The weakness is the one Apple’s holiday films often have: the product arrives as the cure. The film is vague about what actually crushed the boy’s confidence. There are hints of peer pressure and a glimpse of a classroom, but the adversity is a mood, not a story, so when a new laptop fixes it the resolution feels a bit too clean. The real gift in this story is the parents’ belief, and the film knows it, but the edit still lands the emotional peak on the unboxing.
Length is the other issue. At nearly four minutes, the middle section of teenage moping drifts, and a few scenes repeat the same note of quiet withdrawal. The nostalgic touches, like an iPhone 3GS and a 2010-era iMac in the flashbacks, are nice for Apple fans but also a reminder that this is a brand celebrating its own history. And for anyone who has watched Apple’s earlier holiday shorts, the beats are familiar: no dialogue, a lonely kid, a tender reveal, a soft song, the logo.
Still, compared with the busy, gag-driven Christmas spots filling UK and US screens this month, “The Dreamer” stands out by doing less. Adweek notes it is Apple’s first holiday campaign under new CEO John Ternus, and it is a safe but confident choice: lean on the formula that works and hire artists who can make it feel personal.
The verdict
“The Dreamer” is a beautifully shot, heartfelt short, lifted by Bradford Young’s light, Hebru Brantley’s evolving artwork and a perfectly chosen Strawberry Guy song. It runs a little long and lets the MacBook Neo solve a problem the film never really defines, but few holiday ads this year look this good or trust silence this much. Apple’s best holiday film in a few years, even if you can see every beat coming.
Credits: Client: Apple. Agency: TBWA\Media Arts Lab. Production companies: Prettybird and De La Revolucion. Director: Melina Matsoukas. DP: Bradford Young. Artist collaborator: Hebru Brantley. Edit: Final Cut. Post-production: Pariah. Color: Color Collective. Sound: Lime. Music: “Give Me a Dream” by Strawberry Guy. Credits per Ads of the World and Campaign US.
Rating: 4 out of 5
