In 2021, 85 million suspected pieces of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) were found online. In the past year, this problem has grown at an alarming rate of one film or image uploaded every two seconds.

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection is a leading voice in the fight against CSAM.

But how does one Winnipeg-based organization make people understand this global problem? How do we make them grasp this unfathomable number in order to shine a light on this unspoken epidemic and spur change? And how do we do it with no paid media budget?

Film Fests bring titles together from all over the world, and are celebrated with glitz, glamour and fanfare.

Yet, online, there are more videos and images of CSAM than all the world’s film festivals combined. And no one is talking about them.

So we reframed it as the Unwanted Film Festival, the world’s largest film festival, hiding in plain sight. 85 million films. 195 countries. Playing online. Everywhere.

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection is a leading voice in the global fight against CSAM.

But how does this Winnipeg-based organization make people understand the global problem against which they fight every day? How do we make them grasp this unfathomable number in order to shine a light on this unspoken epidemic and spur change? And how do we do it with no paid media budget?

Film Fests bring films together from all over the world, and are celebrated with glitz, glamor and fanfare. Yet, online, there are more videos and images of CSAM than all the world’s film festivals combined. And no one is talking about them.

We’d force the conversation by launching the Unwanted Film Festival during one of the largest film festivals in the world: The Tribeca Film Fest in New York City.

We visualized the scale of this problem. Using artificial intelligence, we built an algorithm that generated 85 million film posters in real time. One every two seconds, representing a new piece of CSAM flooding the internet.

We fed 50 titles, 51 taglines, 90 images and 66 fonts into our engine. In turn, it’s using this data to build 85 million unique titles. And because this is a global issue, the algorithm translated the titles into the six languages most spoken around the world – English, French, Mandarin, Hindi, German and Spanish. What’s more, each title is inspired by real survivor stories.

We launched online and with a live, immersive experience on the doorstep of one of the largest festivals in the world: The Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

Upon entering the experience, festival-goers quickly became surrounded by film posters via 3D projection mapping. Every two seconds, a new poster was generated and projected onto the walls and floor around them, representing the rate at which the Unwanted Film Festival grew last year.

To elicit response and drive action, cards in the form of movie tickets were handed out to visitors. Each featured a QR code that drove to a petition demanding action from the world’s governments and largest tech companies.

The Unwanted Film Festival stole Tribeca’s spotlight. And the conversation:

Website traffic from 166 countries with most coming from India, Canada, US, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Nepal, Vietnam, Morocco and Algeria

Over 19,800 unique visitors the the campaign site

Thousands of petition signatures demanding tech companies stop the upload of known CSAM

50 million earned impressions

Featured on the New York times “The Daily” podcast

Sold out the immersive two-day experience and welcomed hundreds of visitors

Sparked crucial conversation with engagement from police forces, national media and celebrities

Visitors to the experience voiced its impact:

“It’s powerful to see and it’s impossible to imagine 85 million of these being created”

“I’m a teacher so I was deeply disturbed.”

“It’s riveting. It gets into your soul and even the atmosphere and the music it forces you to think.”

“It’s disgusting. What happens all around the world.”