IALU: The Field of Dreams
Fall Grants 2022 - Production Stage
Mostafa Youssef / Short Narrative / Egypt, Qatar / 11 min / Original Language: Arabic / Interests: Animation, Fantasy
Synopsis
Living in Phantasma, one can barely see outside beyond its massive walls. Gates seem empty, with no sign of being used by the city’s inhabitants. Everything is standardized, leaving no place for nature or chance to interfere, not even a place for spontaneous dreams. Every morning, people wake up to the same view of spotless streets and trimmed trees following their mechanistic daily routine. Nobody wonders where the residue of yesterday goes—except for one person, Ialu. Living alone in his house, he starts to dream and write down his thoughts, keeping one and folding another into a paper plane. Throwing the paper planes away, he hopes that they can change someone’s life.
One day, one of the city’s inhabitants commits suicide. Being something abnormal to happen in the town, he believes his paper planes are the reason behind this man’s death. In an unusual meeting with one of the dream sweepers, Ialu learns that he isn’t responsible for the suicidal accident and that his paper planes only reached this dream sweeper, who has become a dream collector after reading Ialu’s secrets. Together, they decide to take action and give dreams back to people.
Credits
- Director
- Mostafa Youssef
- Screenwriter
- Mostafa Youssef
- Producer
- Noura A. Rahman
About the Director
Mostafa Youssef is a research-based artist. He received his MA in Graphic Narratives from Leuven University College of Arts (LUCA) in Brussels, Belgium, after completing his BS.c. in Architecture between Cairo and Liechtenstein. His practice combines experiences from the fields of art and architecture, where he explores historical and contemporary instances from political and social standpoints. His work includes experimentation with diverse media—miniatures, drawings, collage, photography, printmaking, and graphic novels. He developed a language of drawing that is characterized by an emphasis on the process inherent within architecture, a process that is usually absent in the architectural representation.