Invisible Accidents

“Invisible Accidents” is a campaign created in partnership with Almaty Air Initiative, designed with a unique AI hybrid filmmaking approach, to build public support for low-emission zones in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

According to Almaty Air Initiative, air pollution causes roughly ten times as many deaths in the city as traffic accidents. The campaign makes this invisible danger tangible through three short films. “Invisible Accidents” brings a universally recognised symbol of automotive danger—the crash-test dummy—into everyday city life, exposing the human consequences of breathing polluted air.

The creative idea behind the campaign lies in the visual metaphor of crash-test dummies replacing humans in everyday situations. It gives an abstract environmental issue a human scale. It also gives low-emission zones a clear purpose: protecting the people who breathe the city’s air.

Production combined live-action filmmaking with the most advanced AI generative tools. Key scenes were filmed across multiple locations featuring real actors, while AI was used to create photorealistic visual effects, integrate the dummies, and build crash-test sequences. This hybrid approach made demanding cinematic scenes possible within a nonprofit campaign’s limited budget.

With support from the state-funded “Eco Almaty” enterprise, the campaign appeared widely across the city (with multiple placements in metro, on digital bilboards, at bus stations, shopping malls, airports) and generated up to 9.3 million media impressions. It called on residents and city leaders to support low-emission zones that restrict access for vehicles failing to meet emissions standards.

The message: nobody should die simply from breathing the air in their own city.