My movie Ashita is about loneliness, its also about life in the city. Living in a big city breaks you more often than it makes you. I’ve been living in Canada’s biggest city for just over 6 years and it gets shockingly more disturbing every day. I can’t read the paper or look at the news without seeing a random act of insanity—I know what you’re thinking, bad news sells. This may be true on some morbid level, however there’s bad news and then there’s sheer madness. I can accept that in any given city there is crime and violence. But what shocks me is the volume of random violence, teenagers killing the school mates for fun or a man who beats a stranger he’s never met to death with a brick. Teenaged parents leaving their unwanted newborn baby in shopping mall parking lot in the dead of winter. These are signs of an ill city. Signs of, maybe, what the city does to people. Maybe deep down, I am fed up with the city, fed up with the constant feeling of depravity and frustration. Maybe I want out.
The way I create a project is through observation. And in a city like Toronto, there is a lot of observation to be done. I look at people and try to guess what’s in their mind and in their life and from there, the story grows. Sometimes I get depressed doing this, so many sad faces in the crowd, so many complex souls. The question that still drives my creative juices is: Why? Why, with all the opportunities, with all the advantages, with all the culture, with all the options available in big cities do people remain frustrated, stoic and frightened? Do the lies, corruption and general nihilistic sense outweigh the good of the city. Maybe it’s the uncertainty of the city that bites at people. Maybe it’s the sheer size of the unknown in the city’s façade that causes undue rest.
I’ve never pictured myself living anywhere but a big city, stating that the quiet of rural suburbia frightened me. That’s beginning to change, maybe its age, maybe it’s the fact that I am now a father or maybe its both. I often toy with the idea of living somewhere quiet and exploring my secret passion—cooking. I doubt I will ever stop creating, maybe I will make more films, maybe I will write a novel or write poetry. All I know is that not only did I make a movie about what the big can do to people, maybe I am beginning to understand living in a big city. Maybe understanding the city means its time to leave the city.
The way I create a project is through observation. And in a city like Toronto, there is a lot of observation to be done. I look at people and try to guess what’s in their mind and in their life and from there, the story grows. Sometimes I get depressed doing this, so many sad faces in the crowd, so many complex souls. The question that still drives my creative juices is: Why? Why, with all the opportunities, with all the advantages, with all the culture, with all the options available in big cities do people remain frustrated, stoic and frightened? Do the lies, corruption and general nihilistic sense outweigh the good of the city. Maybe it’s the uncertainty of the city that bites at people. Maybe it’s the sheer size of the unknown in the city’s façade that causes undue rest.
I’ve never pictured myself living anywhere but a big city, stating that the quiet of rural suburbia frightened me. That’s beginning to change, maybe its age, maybe it’s the fact that I am now a father or maybe its both. I often toy with the idea of living somewhere quiet and exploring my secret passion—cooking. I doubt I will ever stop creating, maybe I will make more films, maybe I will write a novel or write poetry. All I know is that not only did I make a movie about what the big can do to people, maybe I am beginning to understand living in a big city. Maybe understanding the city means its time to leave the city.
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