The Best Work You May Never See: Cheil Spain Creates Red Cross Campaign Spotlighting The Truth Behind Families Looking For Missing Relatives

The International Committee of the Red Cross has released this film, created by Cheil Spain, to tell the real stories of people looking for their missing relatives.

The campaign aims to break the tired prejudice of the typical static image of relatives posing with a missing person’s photograph. Instead, this photo comes to life to tell the story of the family relentlessly seeking to find a loved one.

Directed by Maxi Blanco of production company Landia, this 90-second film, and four 30-second versions, will run across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube globally.

The activity gives visibility to the tireless effort made by families seeking their missing relatives, and addresses the stereotype of inactive relatives waiting for disappeared people to return. It shows people posing with their relative’s photo, remaining in silence to leave the disappeared person within the photo to tell their own story for the first time. 

María Emilia Cicoria, the audiovisual producer at International Committee of the Red Cross, said: “There is a need to give visibility to the tireless effort made by families seeking their missing relatives. We wanted to touch the hearts of the audience because, behind the typical image of the family member with the photo of their loved one, there is a search story that we can’t even imagine.”

Joaquin Espagnol, ECD at Cheil Spain, said: “Sometimes reality goes beyond fiction--this campaign is full of true testimonies. There were so many compelling tales that it was really hard at the beginning of the process to select the stories of each family.”