Ayush Chandwani's 'Paradiso?' Lays Bare The Myth Of Fulfilment In The City of Dreams

The legendary Swedish film director and screenwriter Ingmar Bergman once said, "Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls."

In 'Paradiso?', Ayush Chandwani poses a deceptively simple question that deals with the dreamlike quality of films: if you scripted your happiness and achieved it, would it truly satisfy you? Shot on a single Super 8 cartridge with no edits, the short film is both stylistically constrained and emotionally expansive — a haunting meditation on the cost of desire in a world addicted to ambition. But don't be fooled. The title's allusion to Dante's Paradiso is ironic: this paradise is neither radiant nor redemptive. It flickers like a dream: beautiful, fragile, and doomed to fade.

Set in Mumbai — a city where dreams are currency — the film centers on an aspiring filmmaker who seemingly achieves everything he once yearned for. And yet, a lingering emptiness gnaws at the edges of this dream come true. The grainy texture of the Super 8 film evokes nostalgia and unreliability, suggesting that memory, like cinema, is always a reconstruction. Chandwani's choice to shoot without edits underscores the relentless, unalterable passage of time. There's no revision, no second take here — only the brutal honesty of a dream as it turns into waking life.

Cinema has long been described as the art of dreams. The silver screen offers us an escape; a reflection of our secret desires; a fantasy of control. But as Paradiso? so sharply observes, there is often a chasm between the dream and the reality of attaining it. The very act of reaching a long-sought goal can render it hollow.

In a city like Mumbai, this question is painfully resonant. Every dream here is also a trap: a house of cards built on borrowed time, unpaid labour, and the futile pursuit of cinematic perfection. Chandwani captures the moment when this fantasy curdles into disillusion, when paradise begins to feel like purgatory in technicolour.

Paradiso? joins a lineage of films that reflect on the dual nature of cinema itself — as both dream-catcher and myth-maker. Movies give us the illusion of control, even transcendence. But, like dreams, they dissipate upon waking. Chandwani's film lingers in that in-between state: the moment after the climax, when the lights come on and we realize we are still ourselves.

Watch Paradiso? here:

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