"The Line no One Sees" Becomes Visible in Project to Highlight the Waiting for Eye Treatment in Brazil

Apr. 16, 2025

Cataract surgery has become the largest queue in the entire SUS (Brazilian Public Unified Health System) among elective processes, reaching an impressive number of 167.5 thousand people waiting for the procedure – even though it is considered simple, safe and quick when performed by experienced surgeons, with an average duration of 10 minutes. To shed light on the fact and seek a possible solution for thousands of patients who suffer from this problem, Central da Visão is taking advantage of Brown April, the month of awareness, prevention and combating blindness, to present the campaign “The queue that no one sees”.

Using advanced hyper-realism techniques, the initiative materializes, in a 2-minute film 100% produced by artificial intelligence, what the real length of this line would be if all of Brazilians patients were actually waiting in sequence. To give you a realistic idea, such a gathering would cover a distance of around 84 kilometers or 52 miles – 4 times the length of Manhattan (NY), six times the size of the River Seine’s stretch within Paris, or enough people to fill the space of 2 full marathons.

In the piece, everyone appears standing still and blindfolded, in a metaphor for the waiting and the anguish caused by the loss of vision. With more than 2 thousand images generated by AI, the tools were trained to reproduce the faces, bodies, expressions and contexts of the Brazilians waiting in the real line, made up mainly of elderly people and patients with lower purchasing power – who have less information about the disease, do not directly access private clinics and are not aware of the available alternatives.

Marta Luconi, CEO of Central da Visão – a social impact company that aims to make ophthalmological surgeries and treatments more accessible in Brazil highlighted:

"This campaign is a call to those who can see, especially relatives and friends of those who suffer from cataracts, about how the disease can be silent and how a cure can seem distant. Using a unique visual appeal that is impossible to miss, our main objective is to raise awareness among Brazilians about a glaring health issue that seems invisible, in addition to reinforcing that the more people know that there is a way, the more lives can be transformed for the better."

 

The project, created by the Brazilian agency Dark Kitchen Creatives and with a film produced by Not So Impossible, also features the website thelinenoonesees.com, with more information about cataracts – a clouding of the natural intraocular crystalline lens that focuses the light entering the eye onto the retina, causing a decrease in vision and eventual blindness if left untreated –, details on how to receive or refer patients for care and testimonials with real stories from the more than 20 thousand surgeries already performed by Central da Visão throughout Brazil.

Guilherme Jahara, founding partner and co-CCO at Dark Kitchen Creatives commented:

"We knew that a theme like this needed an emotional, strong and symbolic execution. Using artificial intelligence was a creative but also strategic choice: after all, only with AI would it be possible to represent the real absurdity of this line, with 167 thousand people, which is invisible to our eyes in practice, but heavy for the entire system – and especially for those waiting. A special way that would touch people and bring this debate to the surface."