Blink

We make art to both represent and treat our own humanity. Galleries, stages and movie theaters are sanctuaries where we are allowed to feel. In them, we are free to react when something touches us. Personally, I’m in debt to films. Watching them has helped me through tough times and making them is the most exhilarant part of my life.

Some people say, “the TV is not a good babysitter.” I beg to differ. I was raised by two working parents, in a country where kids are warned to stay inside. After school, TV was my only companion. Through it, I saw the wonders of this world and other worlds. It opened my imagination and challenged my perspective on issues I had never heard of. Every story placed me in someone else’s shoes, and I saw myself in all of them.

As a filmmaker, I want others to have this introspective discovery with my content. I think of my productions as a discussion with the viewer. I focus on themes that are loaded with a moral question that I’m personally struggling with. I leave it to the audience to fill in the right answer if any. As frightening as it is, the complicated questions in life lack simple answers. There are more gray areas in human righteousness than black and white ones. I’ve found a genre to be a great refugee to explore these ideas. By personifying and materializing them into fantasy characters in surreal environments, we bring our defenses down, opening up to new themes and starting a discussion.