Real Life Glitches Capture the Effects of Alzheimer’s Disease in Powerful Film

BBDO Dusseldorf and Caviar partners with the Alzheimer Forschung Initiative (AFI) to launch a new campaign to support and get donations for Alzheimer’s research.  

Based on the insight that Alzheimer is literally a glitch in the patient’s brain, the social film 'The Glitch' was created using a Datamosh glitched effect to showcase the confused and frustrating moments that a person living with the disease, and their relatives can experience. The goal is to target a younger audience using a popular visual language to spread the message.

The story is inspired by true events described by a group of people living directly with the disease. “We wanted to create a story that people living in an environment that Alzheimer is present would easily relate to, and those who have no idea how it works would be shocked by the overwhelming feeling” describes Dr. Cristian Leibinnes, managing director, and Christian Leimbach, head of public relations at the AFI. “People have been using the Datamosh effect to create many types of cool contents and memes on TikTok and Instagram. Now we are using it to invite this audience to join a bigger challenge” completes Kristoffer Heilemann, managing director creative at BBDO Group Germany.

Teamed with neurologist Dr. Michael Lorrain, the Datamosh effect in the transitions was created with a design interpretation of the brainwaves of patients living with the Alzheimer’s disease, in order to bring the glitch to life.

To create an immersive experience film director Pedro Giomi from Caviar created a first-person perspective to take the audience to the patient’s point of view.

“We are very happy and proud that we have put our shoulders under this campaign, Alzheimer research is very important as it affects millions of people worldwide. It has an enormous impact on individuals and their families”, says Eva Van Riet, executive producer, Caviar.