Project Unbroken Reframes Suicide Loss Grief Through Kintsugi
Project Unbroken's Beauty of Broken is a 2025 integrated film and media campaign created by Tombras that uses the Japanese art of kintsugi — the practice of repairing broken objects with gold — as a visual and emotional metaphor for grief, healing, and renewed strength among families in the United States who have lost a loved one to suicide, according to Airuniversity Af Edu.
Project Unbroken is a nonprofit founded in 2024 by Trina Roffino, who lost her husband to suicide in 2018. The organisation operates in a distinct space within the broader suicide awareness landscape: postvention, meaning support offered in the aftermath of a suicide loss rather than prevention messaging, according to Behavioralhealthnews. As Roffino has stated, "We launched Project Unbroken because families like mine were falling through the cracks after suicide loss". In the United States, this population is substantial and underserved, and the campaign gives it both visibility and a unifying creative symbol, according to Ochealthinfo.
Beauty of Broken launched on November 19, 2025, timed deliberately ahead of International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day on November 22. The campaign spans multiple touchpoints: a cinematic film built around real survivor accounts, an online resource platform, at-home kintsugi kits whose proceeds support the nonprofit, and a physical art exhibition held at Artifact Projects, 155 Suffolk Street, New York City. At its core, the film features three families — eight-year-old Charlice, who lost her father and is represented by a baseball glove; Sarah, whose husband died by suicide and is represented by a watch; and Chris and Martha Thomas, who lost their 24-year-old daughter and are represented by a sunflower. Each object is rendered in CGI cinematography being shattered as if ceramic, then meticulously reconstructed with golden seams — the kintsugi process made visible as a metaphor for survival, scarring, and hard-won wholeness. Clapboard Score: 69/100.
Project Unbroken occupies a deliberate strategic gap in the United States suicide awareness sector. The majority of nonprofits operating in this space concentrate on suicide prevention — awareness campaigns, crisis hotlines, mental health training, and resource signposting. Project Unbroken, by contrast, centres its mission entirely on postvention: financial, emotional, and spiritual support for the families left behind. This distinction is not merely semantic; it reflects a structural underservice of one of the most at-risk populations in American public health.
The stakes are significant. According to the campaign's own sourced data, over 30,000 children in the United States lose a parent to suicide every year, and family members affected by a suicide loss are three times more likely to die by suicide themselves. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, one of the most prominent organisations in this category, operates through 73 community chapters across the United States in 2025 and holds International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day programmes at more than 300 locations across the US, according to annual2025.afsp.org. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and organisations such as the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, which maintains research and practice resources at sprc.org, concentrate their public-facing work heavily on prevention rather than the sustained postvention support that Project Unbroken provides. This leaves a strategic opening that Beauty of Broken is designed to fill — not by competing with prevention messaging but by making the grief and healing experience of suicide loss survivors visible to a broader public audience in the United States for the first time at this scale.
Tombras structured the campaign to reach both survivors seeking community and a general public largely unaware of the postvention need. The kintsugi metaphor functions as a culturally accessible entry point that avoids clinical language while still grounding the campaign in real, named families and genuine emotional testimony. Trina Roffino has articulated the intent directly: "My hope is that Beauty of Broken brings visibility to these families and opens hearts to their healing".
Tombras built the creative execution of Beauty of Broken around a single, discipline-spanning metaphor. The Japanese art of kintsugi — in which cracked ceramics are repaired with lacquer mixed with gold, making the fracture lines visible rather than hidden — gives the campaign its visual language, its structural logic, and its emotional resolution. The choice is precise: kintsugi does not erase breakage but honours it, a posture that aligns exactly with the postvention philosophy of Project Unbroken.
The film anchors the campaign. Tombras's creative team interviewed families in the United States who had lost loved ones to suicide, then built the narrative around objects each family selected as irreplaceable symbols of connection. The production translates those objects — a child's baseball glove, a husband's watch, a daughter's sunflower — into stunning CGI cinematography in which each item shatters as if made of ceramic. The imagery is visceral and intentional: it externalises the internal experience of grief in a way that language alone cannot carry. The second act of the film reverses the destruction, showing each object reconstructed through the kintsugi process until it is whole again, gilded with golden scars. As Roffino stated, "Every golden scar in this campaign represents a child who's rediscovered joy, a parent who's found strength, a family that's learning to live again".
The campaign extends beyond the film into tactile and experiential formats. At-home kintsugi kits allow audiences in the United States to participate in the metaphor physically, with proceeds directed to Project Unbroken. A New York City art exhibition at Artifact Projects, 155 Suffolk Street, brought the reconstructed objects into physical space. QR codes embedded in campaign materials link directly to individual survivor stories, creating a documentary layer that grounds the CGI spectacle in lived testimony. As reported by Campaign on December 2, 2025, the campaign was highlighted among emotional works drawing attention to the fragility and value of human life this season, with specific note given to the shattered ceramic imagery and kintsugi reconstruction. Production credits for the Beauty of Broken film beyond the Tombras agency and Trina Roffino's founding role are not fully publicly documented at this time.
Beauty of Broken earned substantive editorial recognition within days of its November 2025 launch in the United States. As reported by Campaign on December 2, 2025, the campaign was featured in the publication's review of emotionally significant seasonal advertising, with specific praise directed at the shattered ceramic visual device and the kintsugi reconstruction sequence. Muse by Clio published a positive review on November 26, 2025, titled "How Tombras Turned a Shattering Suicide Stat Into an Inspiring Story," as reported by that publication, recognising the campaign's translation of a public health reality into narrative and visual form accessible to a general audience.
No independently verified audience reach, conversion, or donation metrics for the Beauty of Broken campaign are publicly available at the time of publication. What the campaign's structure does make legible is a deliberate design for durable engagement rather than short-term viral impact. The combination of a cinematic film, a physical New York City exhibition, at-home kintsugi kits, and QR-linked documentary survivor testimonies creates multiple points of re-entry across different audience relationships to the subject. For an audience that includes active suicide loss survivors, this layered approach is meaningfully different from a single-platform awareness push. For a general audience in the United States unfamiliar with the postvention space, the kintsugi metaphor provides an emotionally coherent framework without requiring prior knowledge of the clinical or statistical context. The campaign's earned press coverage across trade publications in its first two weeks indicates that the creative strategy succeeded in generating awareness of Project Unbroken's mission at a national level — the primary objective for a nonprofit in its debut campaign year.
Beauty of Broken is a 2025 integrated campaign by Tombras for Project Unbroken, a US nonprofit supporting families after suicide loss. The campaign uses kintsugi — the Japanese art of repairing broken objects with gold — as a metaphor for grief and healing, expressed through a cinematic film, survivor stories, kintsugi kits, and a New York City art exhibition.
Kintsugi is the Japanese practice of repairing cracked ceramics with gold, making fractures visible rather than hidden. In Beauty of Broken, the technique serves as a metaphor for suicide loss grief and healing, showing that surviving profound loss does not erase the break but can transform it into something whole and honoured.
Postvention is support provided to families and individuals after a suicide loss, rather than before one occurs. Project Unbroken focuses on postvention because founder Trina Roffino identified that families like hers were falling through the cracks after suicide loss, with most US nonprofits in this category concentrating on prevention messaging rather than sustained family support.
Beauty of Broken launched on November 19, 2025, timed deliberately ahead of International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day on November 22. The timing connected the campaign's debut to an established moment of collective recognition for suicide loss survivors across the United States, amplifying visibility for Project Unbroken's postvention mission.
Tombras created Beauty of Broken for Project Unbroken in 2025. The Tombras team interviewed real families in the United States who had lost loved ones to suicide, building the campaign's cinematic film around personal objects each family chose to represent their connection to the person they lost.
Campaign published a positive review on December 2, 2025, highlighting the campaign's shattered ceramic imagery and kintsugi reconstruction as emotionally significant seasonal work. Muse by Clio published a positive review on November 26, 2025, recognising how Tombras translated a critical suicide loss statistic into an accessible and inspiring narrative for US audiences.
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