Only empathy can turn a divided nation into a united one again. With this premise, we created a stunt through the streets of New York to get people to experience empathy firsthand. 50 characters with mirror heads walked around the city looking for people totally opposed to them in terms of religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc. On the mirror head, people could see their face reflected on the body of someone totally different. For example, a mirror-headed Muslim walking through the streets of Williamsburg, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, seeked the reactions of its inhabitants. A homeless man stood in the Wall Street area, reflecting city's business people. A black teenager walked near police stations looking for a white policeman to reflect on his body.

During two days in March 2017 (30th and 31st), 50 characters with mirror heads walked the streets of New York, so people could see themselves in others and feel empathy. We built 50 special heads with mirrors on five sides. On the front side we used a two-way mirror, so the actors could see from inside of the device.

It was very important to get reflections from most social identities, so we distributed the characters throughout different areas of New York. We walked East Williamsburg (a predominantly Jewish neighborhood), Harlem (cultural nexus of black USA), East Village (mostly inhabited by young people), Wall Street (business district), Upper East Side (conservative neighborhood), Midtown (visitors and tourists), etc.

We documented the reactions with a reduced crew who avoided interfering with the one-on-one experience. The resulting film was published on social networks and sent to the media.

More than 12,000 people were impacted by the stunt and 1,628 people in NYC saw themselves in others. They experienced empathy and realized the importance of it at this moment. Some examples: Jewish people saw themselves on the body of a Muslim, policemen on the body of a black teenager, conservatives on the body of a drag queen, and Wall Street business men and women on the body of a homeless person. Those 1,628 people represented the division of American society in the last year. 91% of them had a positive reaction, showing empathy towards the person on whom they saw themselves reflected.

The campaign was featured in media such as The New York Times, Forbes, People and Vanity Fair - reaching a global audience of 450 million with no media budget. In one week, the stunt gathered 26,000 tweets and about 232 million Twitter impressions. Although it was not one of our priority objectives, ticket sales for Tribeca Film Festival increased by 21% over the previous year.