"What we see, read, or consume today is little more than an echo, a mirage of a world that no longer exists. The era has shifted. We stand at the threshold of a golden age, where the pulse of the universe, carried by the central sun, descends upon the earth and calls us to awaken. To stay beneath the weight of darkness is to remain blind; the artist must rise, unshackled, into clarity."

Imam Hasanov is a filmmaker, cultural producer, and founder of the DokuBaku International Documentary Film Festival - Azerbaijan’s first and only independent documentary film festival. He also founded Free Art, a Baku-based production company that supports author-driven art house films and creative documentaries with strong local roots and global resonance.

Imam’s work lives at the intersection of storytelling, curation, and activism. He is the founder and director of CıxıŞ (EXIT) - Cinema&Theater, an independent space for cinema and performance, and the creator of Doklad iSchool, a hybrid (online|offline) platform that mentors the next generation of Azerbaijani filmmakers. Through initiatives like DokuToor and original DokuBaku awards such as NEWEYE, iCYBORG, and iCOSMOS, Imam champions diverse, daring voices and continually seeks new cinematic languages.

His filmmaking is driven by metaphysical curiosity, emotional depth, and a belief in art, cinema as a transformative force. While his projects have reached major international platforms, Imam remains committed to shaping Baku as a dynamic center of independent thought, art, heart and cinematic exploration.

This summer we had the opportunity to watch his film "Dreamers: People of Light" which was shown in the Competition Program - Documentary Film of the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival and that is how we achieved this inspiring correspondence.

If your life were a film, what genre would it be?

If my life were a film, it would be a docu-mystica - a fusion of poetic drama and reality, where every moment is steeped in metaphor. For me, life itself is a mystical allegory, an art form, a pulse of something that resists explanation. Perhaps one day we will come closer to grasping its essence, discovering a truth so clear and luminous that even a child could understand it.
Right now, I am shaping a new work: a docu-mystical project that unfolds as a poetic quest for truth. I feel I am on the brink of touching it, and soon I hope to reveal it through images, symbols, and the quiet voice within. Stay tuned, perhaps next year our paths will cross in Sarajevo, or in some other unexpected place.

What would your role be in it?

I would be the wanderer-observer, drifting through places and souls, gathering fragments of stories like scattered pearls. My life itself is a film, a book, a poem, a work of art - what more could I ask? Yet I discover the most about myself not in solitude, but in the reflection of others: in you, in them, in the endless mirror of human faces. Each encounter deepens my inner world, and each moment becomes a chapter of the greatest book I could ever read.
I love all that unfolds before me. I cherish every touch, every sight, for everything I meet is either a part of me or a spark of the universe. Why then should I hate, or turn away, from others or from myself? We are all players, moving across a vast stage, where life is written and unwritten, beginning and ending all at once. In truth, there is no first act, no final curtain. It is all one.
And now, I play the role of an old spirit, one who has walked here before, who was the first and will be the last to ever wander this planet.

Hero or antihero?

I lean toward the antihero. Contradictions shape us, and I am made of them. People rarely welcome those who look too deeply, who dare to uncover the truth, because truth unsettles, it strips illusions bare. That's why most live behind a veil, 99 percent dreaming inside a constructed lie.
But I refuse to dream someone else's dream. I live once, in this form, in this body - why surrender it to falsehood? I hunger for truth, for a life unmasked. And when I look around, I see sleepwalkers. I want to wake them, or at least to step beyond them. That makes me the antagonist, the antihero. Yet in my own heart, I'm simply searching: why am I here, who brought me here, and who will take me across the next threshold? I already gaze from the other side. My spirit belongs to a fifth dimension and beyond.

If you could choose a historical period in which time would you choose to live?

If I could choose, I might say the early Renaissance, when art and knowledge rediscovered each other, when light cracked open the dark.
But in truth, I choose now. I choose this moment. Why dream of another century when we are the ones shaping history, line by line, breath by breath?

I do not long to live in the Renaissance, i long to create it. My own Renaissance, here, in this age. I am already walking toward the light; sooner or later, you will hear of me. Perhaps you already sense it, already know me in some hidden way.
And as you read these words, can you feel it? That I am here with you, speaking directly across this fragile thread of time?
When I write, I think of you. Of your curious questions that spark the flame. And I whisper, thank you.
And maybe, when you read this, you too will pause for a heartbeat, and say, whether with a smile or a sigh - Wow. Or perhaps simply: Poahh.

Favorite word? (at this moment)

At this moment, my favorite word is "cosmos."
It carries both order and mystery, infinity and intimacy.
It gathers everything within itself, just as we carry it within us.
As we move through this world, the world moves through us and that, I believe, is true.

What is the most important change you want to bring to the world?

The change I wish to bring is an awakening, an invitation for people to look deeper: into one another, into themselves, into the vastness of the world. To feel responsible for what they see. I want them to recognize another dimension, not one of science fiction but one already hidden in the mind and the heart. When your heart and mind are open enough to listen to their secret language, they reveal themselves to you. They begin to trust you, just as you begin to trust yourself. And trusting yourself is nothing less than trusting the universe.
But to arrive there, we must first awaken from the illusion that reality is only what we can touch. Once you awaken, the whole cosmos becomes legible - its symbols, its codes, its words, its films, its people. The universe begins to speak because you have learned to listen.
For this, you must forget what is false and remember what is eternal: your true nature. This is the understanding I want to offer the world - and in truth, it has already begun. The journey has only just opened, and soon we will step into the fifth dimension. That is why the theme of my festival, DokuBaku, is 5DHYPERDIVINEMATR3X.
At the heart of this transformation is the revival of true love, a love untouched by conditions, a love that preserves the world simply by existing. A love that gives everything and demands nothing in return. A love that whispers: I see without eyes. I speak without a mouth. I walk without legs.
Remember, love cannot wound. It can only heal. It should be released into the universe freely, for what is given returns magnified.
And alongside love, knowledge, a temple with no walls, no rulers, no chains. A source that no gold can buy, no power can corrupt. A single center of light from which each soul may draw its own portion. With such knowledge, with such love, we could refine ourselves endlessly, stretching toward infinity.

And what is the most important internal change for an artist?

For an artist, the most vital transformation is to remain porous - never calcified by certainty, never imprisoned by final answers.
What we see, read, or consume today is little more than an echo, a mirage of a world that no longer exists. The era has shifted. We stand at the threshold of a golden age, where the pulse of the universe, carried by the central sun, descends upon the earth and calls us to awaken. To stay beneath the weight of darkness is to remain blind; the artist must rise, unshackled, into clarity.
This awakening is not abstract - it is lived. It means moving through the world as though in a heightened reality: attentive to every gesture, every word, every image chosen, every soul encountered. It is to know that words are not empty, they are forces, carriers of creation or destruction. To wield them responsibly, the artist must clear the sediment of the subconscious and step into a higher current of awareness.
An artist is not merely a maker of objects or images. An artist is a creator of worlds. At the very least, they must create their own reality, and at their most daring, they shape a new universe, governed by new laws, new rhythms, new possibilities.

"Dreamers" – are you a dreamer or a witness?

I am both a dreamer and a witness. A dreamer who dares to witness, and a witness who becomes the dream. In answering you, I realize I am also a creator, shaping a universe of my own. To create, one must first dream and not in fragments or shadows, but in vast horizons. Always dream of the immense, never small. From there, I weave bridges between the microcosmos and the macrocosmos, carrying the spark of the infinite across both.

Which tradition would you keep and which would you change?

I would keep the tradition of hospitality - our open doors, our shared bread, the warmth that makes strangers into kin.
But I would change the tradition of silence, the quiet that buries wounds beneath layers of fear.
I would change everything - religion, philosophy, even the mirrors we hold up to truth, because the world, our world, has been misunderstood for far too long.
The past I would keep like an archive, like the secret files of a forgotten century: a reminder that we once walked in darkness.

Now it is time for light,
for paradise not as myth,
but as enlightenment,
for truth that reshapes even the shadows.

In truth, everything looks different.
Even the night carries its own radiance.
Every step, every error, every scar brings knowledge,
and knowledge is a gift we must hold with gratitude.

From the past we learn.
On its ashes we build.
And in that building, we rediscover beauty,
the beauty of a world we thought we had lost.

Is football a "male thing," or is women's empowerment a "problem"?

Football belongs to no gender. It is the game of movement, of passion, of collective breath, a field wide enough for every soul. Women's empowerment is not a problem; it is an evolution, a natural unfolding like dawn breaking over night.
The real battle is not on the pitch but in our minds. We keep dividing the world into black and white, male and female, as if life itself were so simple. Yet beneath all those labels, we are one. Birth and death come for everyone, in the same silence, with the same inevitability. Every woman, every man, every living and unliving thing carries the right to exist, to be free, to rise in its own strength.
What we call "strength" is both visible and invisible, the muscle of the body and the pulse of the spirit. But the body is only a vessel. We are not skin, nor shape, nor bone, we are soul, we are spirit, each of us taking on a temporary form in this great cinematic frame called life.
Freedom does not mean restraint; it means mastery. To own oneself fully - thoughts, actions, desires, without being enslaved by illusions. True freedom is not in denying who we are, but in embodying it with grace.
And in this freedom, we owe one another something profound: to be examples, not just to each other but to those who come after us. To live in such a way that our children inherit not cages of thought, but open skies of possibility.

The best thing in Baku that's not touristy?

The best thing in Baku that isn't touristy is wandering the old neighborhoods at night where shadows carry whispers of the past through narrow, winding streets.
Yet Baku has never been a tourist city, at least not to me. It is not a place of attractions, but a place of revelations. To outsiders, it may seem exotic, but to me it is mystical, a living presence rather than just a city.
I love it freely, without obligation, not for its outward appearance, but for the depth of its soul. And in Baku's soul I see a young, beautiful girl, radiant and untamed. In her heart burns an eternal flame, the same fire that gave our homeland its name: the Land of Fires. And because I, too, am fiery, perhaps that is why I live here, and why I love this place beyond measure.

Sarajevo in one sentence: A city of wounds and warmth living side by side.

What are your future plans and future topics you will cover?

I plan to continue weaving films that search for the invisible threads binding us - human connection, spirituality, and the fragile dance between creation and destruction.
For the past six years, I've been nurturing a project I call a docu-mystica - a form that aspires to be unlike anything before it. Through it, I seek to unveil the landscapes of my inner world and the transformations that arise when one shifts their perspective on life. When you begin to sense that we are not separate, but particles of one vast universe, you start to see how the smallest microcosm can ripple through the grand design of the macrocosm. In that awareness, the Great Creator is no longer distant but a living presence, and you realize you are both fragile fragment and essential spark within the whole.
And this is only the beginning. The next steps are bolder, more mysterious, more luminous than anything I have attempted so far. My dream is to turn this world into a living fairytale, one in which wonder, mystery, and beauty are part of our daily breath. The works ahead are larger than life, yet rooted in the simple commitment I carry: to grow endlessly. With each film, with each step, with each act of creation, I move closer, closer to myself, closer to the source, closer to the origin from which all stories flow.