FightTheStroke’s New Film Can’t Define Cerebral Palsy, so it’s Opening a Global Casting Call Instead

• DUDE Milano’s “A Truly Cerebral Campaign” for FightTheStroke is a behind-the-scenes film about a creative team trying, and failing, to find the one “right” way to portray a complex disability as Cerebral Palsy
• The film ends by inviting people with Cerebral Palsy worldwide to send in a self-tape using #TrulyCerebral, building a Truly Cerebral Casting Archive for the creative industry
• Directed by Tommaso Pitta, with media strategy by Kotton, the campaign launches 2 October across FightTheStroke’s channels

How do you make an awareness film about a condition that never looks the same twice? That’s the question at the heart of FightTheStroke‘s new campaign, and instead of answering it, Italian agency DUDE Milano has made the struggle the crux of the story.

FightTheStroke is an Italian foundation that supports families of young stroke survivors and with a disability of  Cerebral Palsy. Cerebral Palsy is one umbrella condition, but it can impact movement, posture, communication, coordination and independence in profoundly different ways from one person to the next. That’s what makes it so hard to explain, let alone represent on screen.

Last year, DUDE and FightTheStroke launched their partnership with a manifesto film introducing the condition. This year’s brief was to go deeper and make Cerebral Palsy recognisable by showing its many different manifestations.

“A Truly Cerebral Campaign” is a self-aware, gently comic short film that turns the camera on the agency itself. It follows a creative team handed an impossible brief: explain Cerebral Palsy clearly and definitively, in 30 seconds, within a week. Their neat one-line definition doesn’t survive the casting studio, as every person they meet adds something new. With each rewrite the script grows longer and less certain, until the whiteboard is crammed with caveats and the team concludes, deadpan, “We might need a smaller font.”

Mixing workplace comedy with casting scenes featuring real people with Cerebral Palsy, the film lets the audience learn alongside the creatives and reach the same realisation that Cerebral Palsy isn’t one thing, and it can’t be told as a single story. It closes with a call to action: there are countless ways to represent the condition, because there are countless ways to live with it, so it’s time to show the world your talents.

The second phase of the campaign invites people with Cerebral Palsy around the world to send in a simple self-tape, introducing themselves, talking about their condition and, above all, showing what they can do. That could be dancing, sport, singing, playing an instrument, speaking languages, their job, a hobby or simply an everyday task done their own way. Entries are shared using #TrulyCerebral and tagging @FightTheStroke. They will become part of the Truly Cerebral Casting Archive, an evolving digital collection designed to help agencies, production companies, filmmakers and brands discover new faces and make inclusive casting a more natural part of how stories get told.

Francesca Fedeli, President of FightTheStroke Foundation, said: “”For years, we have tried to explain Cerebral Palsy through what it can limit. But no definition could capture the whole experience, because Cerebral Palsy never looks the same from one person to another. If even a creative team cannot identify the ‘right’ person with Cerebral Palsy, how can we expect the world to recognize the condition through a single face or a single story? That is why we are not looking for one person to represent everyone. We are opening the casting to everyone.”

Livio Basoli, CCO & Partner at DUDE Milano, said: “Last year taught us how difficult it is to define and represent Cerebral Palsy without simplifying it.”

Lorenzo Picchiotti, CCO & Partner at DUDE Milano, added: “So, this year, we decided to turn that experience into the campaign itself. There is no single way Cerebral Palsy looks or feels. And there shouldn’t be a single way to represent it.”

Tommaso Pietrarelli, Co-Founder & Partner at Kotton, said: “Working alongside FightTheStroke reminded us how important it is to tell the story of Cerebral Palsy without reducing it to a single narrative. For us, media was not simply a way to amplify the campaign, but a tool to make space for more stories and, above all, for the people who live this reality every day.”

“A Truly Cerebral Campaign” launches on 2 October across FightTheStroke‘s website, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn with media by Kotton.

Source: DUDE Milano

  Advertising, Campaign, charity, DUDE, DUDE Milano, FightTheStroke, Kotton, Marketing