Ayoub Qanir enjoyed a lot of success for his film Artificio Conceal, a psychological thriller he wrote in 2014. But it was important to him not to be pigeonholed in a niche or filmic genre. So he found another, ‘smaller’ method, in his words, to tell an emotional and original story with minimum resources. And made a film called The World of Which We Dream Doesn’t Exist, which featured in the 22nd International Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram, in the competition category.
An American filmmaker, Ayoub appears to not leave any marks to trace his works back to him. Before both these films, he made his award-winning experimental series Human After All, featuring the French electronic band Daft Punk.
“A filmmaker must constantly search for many artistic grounds and styles for his craft to keep improving,” he says in an interview. So, to learn new ways and explore ‘new parts of himself’, he uncovered a new method for The World of Which We Dream Doesn’t Exist.
“It represents an interesting expansion of my cinematic expression. As a filmmaker and artiste, I find it critical to constantly challenge myself into new artistic languages and universes — constantly seeking new mediums and ways of making films.”
The movie visits generations of a family living in Mongolia, connecting the lives of a grandfather and his grandson, to the events taking place in another plane, connecting one to the past. “This film quenches my personal thirst and curiosity for the shamanic world in Mongolia and its consequential spirituality. Mongolia has fascinated my imagination for years now, and finding the right story to experience and tell was only a matter of time. Setting this film in Mongolia against the Khuvsgul Valley as a backdrop was of grand splendor and a major challenge in itself,” Ayoub says.
As if all his many experimentations with movie-making were not enough, Ayoub also turns at times to graphic novels and music videos.
This is how he explains it: “Many great filmmakers are artistic chameleons or polymaths, James Cameron (Oceanography), Joseph Kosinski (Architecture) or even Steve Jobs, when he produced the first ever animated feature film, Toy Story. Film directors are expected to conceive of and inhabit the universes they place their films in and for that they are expected to be masters of many trades. Inspired by such a feat and pursuing my passion for all of the above, I embarked on a journey (which I am still on) of exploring, processing and digesting as many artistic languages as possible to potentially craft my own cachet and filmic signature.”
